[This game's difficulty is slept on]

19 minutes ago, Aethelstan said:

If this is happening to you repeatedly, you are moving your units in range of too many enemy units at once. You can see the total enemy attack range and individual enemy attack ranges. In the early game, except for specific choke points, it's very easy to never be in range of more than two enemy units at once because enemies are pretty spaced out. The Valm campaign is different and throws a lot of people at you at once but you should be pretty well leveled by then. In Awakening you often need to progress through chapters slowly, until most enemies are cleared out. Sometimes that's moving just one or two spaces at a time so only one or two enemies can reach you. Sometimes you need to move backwards if fliers are on their way. Never go deep into the enemy range where several can attack the same unit and over. Most will not be that durable until you learn skills like Aegis and Pavise.

Press x to see the enemy attack range and move characters so they are just barely one tile into the range. When that happens just the very closest enemy should be able to reach your unit. In Awakening you should spend more time letting enemies come to you than the reverse.

Frederick should get very little exp. You want to use him to bait and weaken, not cast the final blow. Giving him bronze weapons can help if he's too strong otherwise and they are cheap. I mostly don't use the tonics (again Donnel is the exception because he is truly annoying to train until he starts to snowball). They can certainly help but aren't necessary. Neither is forging, though again it helps. I just prefer saving as much cash as possible for promotion items and some of the more expensive staves.

Personally I feel tonics and forging are basically mandatory, even now my units still suck somewhat. (Chrom and Virion easily out-damage Vaike by a signifficant margin for instance despite Vaike being an axe-user.)

I am trying to play slowly but A: the side-chapters try to force you to be fast for a good reward and B: Most of the story missions involve every single enemy charging for you and you can't really slow down 12 dudes barreling straight towards you in chapters like Foreseer.

And then you have Chapters like Incursion where you have to move or you'll get ambush spawns dumped on you.

And again I'll see a 1-2 tile wide chokepoint and try to hold there but then Dual Strike kicks in and then I'm dead so I just had to grind to the point where Dual strike won't get me killed.

 

[Tropes or Clichés in games that you hate?]

Blatant Plot-armor, where the player character/others magically survive injuries that should slow them down (or even depending on the game, injuries that would kill them in gameplay) because it's a cutscene, I'm okay if it's somewhat I guess reasonable. (falling in the water kills you in Halo games since there's no swimming/off cliffs out of bounds but Chief can survive these in cutscenes.)

Cutscene-teleportation, I really don't like it when somehow characters get the drop out of each other so blatantly from nowhere you'd think Warp-staves existed, a pretty bad example exists in Tomb Raider 2013, you move through a highly narrow mountain path with very large bits of mountain on your left and right, so  you go through this narrow "V" Shapped path until  you reach a bridge and suddenly there's a cutscene that ends with you getting knocked out from dude suddenly appearing from behind you, despite you having just moved through a narrow mountain where there was blatantly nowhere for them to hide and wait, there's also a terrible example of this in Rise of the Tomb Raider, Lara's behind a building, she checks the right corner, she then walks 2 steps to check the left corner, turns around and suddenly there's a guy who in literally a second, ninja-ran around the corner and raised his rifle to knock Lara out, all without making a sound, in under 2 seconds, it feels incredibly lazy whenever a game does anything like this. (At least FE actually has in-universe teleportation magic.)

 

 

[What is your unpopular Fire Emblem opinion?]

11 minutes ago, Sooks said:

When you run out of divine pulses, your unit doesn’t come back without redoing the whole chapter (on classic).

The problem is you have way more of them than you'd realistically need in Echoes and I hear that's a problem in Three Houses too.

I think Divine Pulse should require a consumable item of sorts to recharge. (like if Echoes made you go to a shrine and each donation to Mila only restored a single charge for instance.)

[This game's difficulty is slept on]

1 hour ago, Aethelstan said:

Pair up absolutely has uses beyond defense and defense is not even the most imporant use. The most important use is speed. Pair up can move units out of the threshold where they would be double attacked or sometimes move them over the threshold to double attack enemy units. It also makes units more dodgy. Chrom/Sumia or Sully/Sumia should dodge most early games enemies more often than not. As I said before Vaike benefits a lot from extra skill, Sumia usually wants someone buffing her strength,  all the early game magic users benefit from Robin in particular. If someone is holding a chokepint ever, you almost always want them paired so they can be a strong as possible while they hold it. The list of combat uses goes on and on.

You also bring up another use for pair up in your post. Many units struggle to kill in the early chapters of the game but pair up can increase their damage output until they are strong enough to be useful on their own. Frederick and Chrom are both great for this. Chrom in particular because he's usually the unit that does the recruiting and he can pair with them immediately after the conversation, giving big buffs to speed and strength.

The game expects you to be using the mechanic and it's balanced around that. If you pair up your units, they will be strong enough to get their own exp from campaign and you won't need to grind. I have beaten Awakening on Hard with no grinding multiple times. There are even people on this fourm who have done it on Lunatic. I promise you it's possible. But it requires using pair up liberally.

 

I tried using pair up liberally on my first playthrough attempt, I died due to dual strikes constantly making me suddenly not-safe when I thought I was safe and everyone ended up with bad EXP aside from Robin and Frederick, to the point where 50-60 chance for me to hit and 70-100 chance for them to hit was kinda the norm and I got soft-locked since there was no way I could realistically clear any battle consistently.

So it was just a ton of "Oh great, Dual strike screwed up and got someone killed out of my control." and "Why can can not even a single duo of units take anyone consistently that doesn't have Frederick in it?"

Chrom only got good in my current playthrough because I used random battles to get him to level 20 and it still took to around level 15-ish for him to merely do enough damage and hit consistently against non-Wyverns.

Maybe I got extremely unlucky with level-ups but in my first playthrough even trying to use pair up as much as possible, I just got soft-locked until i got enough random battles as everyone would almost certainly get hit and die if more than a 1 enemy attacked them at once, My units were all simply trash even trying to use pair-up and all Pair-up really did was sometimes let them survive 1-2 extra attacks or double, which only helps so much when you're 100 percent chanced to get hit and it's a coin flip if you even get to hit at all.

There's simply too much random BS in this game and it feels like it all has to go your way, the random tiles that can give a small EXP boost or great weapons, your units randomly getting surges in stats from the barracks, your units randomly finding great weapons in the barracks and it all combines together to make a very unfun strategy game experience because it feels like I'm utterly screwed if it doesn't go my way, (My current playthrough actually went alot smoother because I got an Ephraim's lance in the first level so it feels more like I got lucky rather than actually improving at all.) it feels entirely up to the luck of the draw rather than my actual skill.

Or then you have the side-chapters, which are frankly BS as you're protecting  the worst green units in the entire franchise, weak villagers that charge into danger, I give up on actually trying to save them because you're forced to constantly waste rescue staff charges trying to get them to stay in safety and not run across the map into danger, at least other Green Units can somewhat fight while these villagers can easily get one-rounded, it's not fun to be given essentially impossible side-chapters when I'm first given them.

Granted today I did actually find out you can use temporary stat-boosters before battle so that probably would have helped admittingly.

[What is your unpopular Fire Emblem opinion?]

7 minutes ago, Sooks said:

Divine pulse goes greatly with classic mode (and casual), and since you don’t have to use it, it should always stay around.

Is that unpopular?

I wouldn't mind it but there's definitely a few BS moments that sorta force you to. (such as out of nowhere enemy spawns right on top of you like when you fight Miklan.)

If it was like Echoes where there isn't actually anything that makes it basically mandatory occasionally I wouldn't mind.

[So what exactly dictates the spawning of Challenge/Skirmishes?]

I've seen it mentioned that it's a "Certain amount of time" to make them spawn is this in-game time (AKA I need to leave the game running on the map screen.) or 3DS Internal clock time?

[This game's difficulty is slept on]

8 hours ago, Aethelstan said:

First, when we say pair up, we don't mean two units standing on two seperate tiles next to each other. You can have two units occupy the same tile as a kind of super unit with one person leading and one person supporting. This raises the lead's stats based mostly on the supporting character's class. If two characters are next to each other but not paired up, they can still dual strike and dual guard each other but there is no stat boost for either of them. If you aren't pairing up that may be why it seems like the enemy's stats are so high, they are meant to compare to the stats of paired units, not individual ones. Especially on harder difficulties. The game assumes you are using pair ups a lot.

When you get a new character that's too weak for direct hits or just low on HP after fighting, you can have them be the support in a pair up so they aren't exposed to attack. If you pair up Vaike and Lon'qu and have Lon'qu lead, there will be no way for Vaike to get hit as long as Lon'qu is alive. Same for new units. Pair them to someone stronger immediately. Or if you have a new unit lead the pair up with say, Frederick or Kellam supporting, they may get enough defense for them to be fine as a lead for a bit. The trade off is now for those two units, you only get one action per turn between them. Splitting them back into two units counts as your action. (The skill Galeforce can eventually change that dynamic but not till late game if you don't grind). For Lon'qu/Vaike specifically, if Vaike is leading he will get a lot of skill and speed stats from Lon'qu which helps fix his low hit and avoid rates. Again you get none of those stat boosts for them just being next to each other. They have to be paired up.

You don't have to use Lon'qu with Vaike, that's just one I like. Vaike can get the extra skill and speed he needs from Chrom or Sumia in pinch (Sumia can't support with him but she still gives a lot of speed to whoever she is paired with). If you use pair ups you shouldn't have to grind anyone on Hard mode except maybe Donnel. 

Simply put, in my experience, if it's not someone that buffs defense, Pair-up is never actually worth it  if there's more than a handful of enemies left you can easily predict, I just used that as an example to show how the pair-up mechanics can get you killed even when you're trying to avoid them. (I'd say there's about 7-8ish moments where Pair-up definitely helped and 20 times where they've forced a reset on my current playthrough and I'm on chapter 7.)

Pair-up is pretty much only worth it with units that are completely trash to use on their own and at that point why not bring someone who isn't trash on their own.

• It's harder to wall-off healers/archers and other fragile units when your unit count is cut in half.
• Separating units effectively uses up both their turns so you're screwed if you need them both as separate units right now.
• The stat boost, if it's not defense, is almost never worth it since now the enemies have one target that can attack from all angles to dog-pile them/easily run past them to stab a healer, (While in my Vaike/Lon'qu example, they could only attack in one direction.) in addition to that stat boost usually being marginal at best, a few extra points of speed don't help when Vaike has trouble hitting the target and now he's going to get dogpiled.
• Dual Strike is awful, it adds a completely random variable that you can only see on the battle forecast, so it throws a big monkey wrench in actually predicting when enemy units will die, which in Fire Emblem is a very, very bad thing when it comes to trying to survive the enemy phase, dual strike is extra worse since you have to effectively actively fight your own units to get them in awkward positions where they can't dual strike but still block off 1-2 tile hallways and even THEN now your units can be attacked from multiple angles now. (and as a personal note, I absolutely hate random invisible RNG for a mechanic like this, yes I know you can see it on the battle forecast but when you're baiting Wyverns and such you have no way of seeing it.)

The problem is, with everyone paired up, Lissa is effectively useless since I have no way of safely using her when I effectively only have 4 units for most of a battle, since she'll get dog-pilled when I have her heal someone and there's no way to block the enemy off, since I only have 4/5 units so I end up just spamming healing items for healing. (which means I'm broke.)

It's only really changed started to change recently after I've had a ton of random battles to grind and that's more due to grinding than pair-up itself and this is with me using randomly-obtained weapons like Glass Bows and Ephraim''s Lances, if I didn't have these I would have actually gotten soft-locked and had to grind just to have a chance of winning sooner and a strategy game where you're heavily reliant on random drops isn't a very good one in my book.

Maybe I have the wrong idea since I've seen it constantly recommended as a good "Beginner's game" but FE Awakening forces me to be constantly broke forging/buying new weapons and grinding as much as possible just to have a fighting chance at any chapter. (and since the only way to grind at will is a super-expensive item, that doesn't exactly help.), I effectively have to be trying my absolute hardest and I'm just on Hard and haven't even gotten to chapter 10 yet, I pretty much feel like I have to use my limited finances (Why can't we just grind in the arena?) even more conservatively only on anything vital.

[What is your unpopular Fire Emblem opinion?]

57 minutes ago, Murozaki said:

Gangrel had already made up his mind yes, but a point that is made explicit in the story is that he's essentially painting Ylisse in the wrong for his countrymen to rally them and make them genuinely buy into his cause. Again, Gangrel is not right and is never portrayed as such, Chrom's attitude isn't an issue because it makes Gangrel justified, it's an issue because it makes Gangrel be able to make himself look justified.

Also really? You're really looking at a typical "You have great potential" speech you see in hundreds of pieces of media and going "He's tricking that boy!"?

Question: If instead of punch it was a literal pie to the face would you take it that seriously? Would you still act as if Sumia is some awful person for it? Because that's literally what the punch is meant to be like in the context of the scene.

Also if you seriously think a single punch is the some kind of greatly unforgivable thing, or that again, a generic "You have potential" speech is some kind of emotional manipulative thing, i'd advise you to stop consuming any media, you clearly obsess too much about moral implications no one else cares about if you seriously think that.

Because the speech doesn't make sense and gameplay proves it, Chrom's a idiot to actually believe what he's saying.

I don't think Chrom is intentionally manipulating Donnel but it doesn't make sense and Donnel being absolutely terrible sorta makes Chrom look bad as a leader when he's persuading completely useless farmboys to join who have no idea how to actually fight.

 

Yes , even if it was a pie, that particular bit of slapstick wouldn't be funny, I like slapstick but that scene entirely falls flat considering how serious the circumstances are. 

[What is your unpopular Fire Emblem opinion?]

22 minutes ago, Axie said:

are we talking lunatic (where, i assume, most units are not very good anyway)? because donnel is piss easy to grow in normal even without grinding lol.

Hard, Donnel will pretty much consistently die against anything that isn't an archer ( and even then you need to block the archer in with 3 other units as he'll get one-rounded by archers pretty much all the time.), I'd be impressed if there is a more obnoxious to level up character in the series outside of FE1 healers, every other unit in the series can usually A: Hit consistently, B: survive getting attacked at least once or C : do good damage or D : be a healer or some other class with non-combat utility, Donnel literally does nothing. (and it's pretty crappy design I say to give a player literally the worst character in the game as a "Reward" for their first-side mission.)

And if he's paired up with someone, then you're stuck praying he does a dual strike for like 2 points of damage to get some EXP and that point why not use literally any other character since you already have way better characters. (And if you try to focus on Donnel, surprise! all the enemies get not-insignificantly increased stats a few chapters later and now all your units are underlevelled for a single unit that's still hot garbage and worse than literally all of them so trying to use Donnel has effectively soft-locked you until you grind the terrible random battles.)

And Random battles are a mess for reasons I've said earlier. (And you can't even consistently do them since you have to keep turning your 3DS on/off.)

2 hours ago, Murozaki said:

Because again, the joke isn't that Chrom "deserves" to be punched, the joke is literally the fact it shatters the mood the scene had until then, Sumia herself apologizes immediately and the other characters laught not because "Hey Chrom is such a loser" but because again, it was completley out of nowhere.

 

It being out of nowhere doesn't make it funny, it's not really funny at all and Sumia is still a terrible person for it. (even a slap would have been uncalled for frankly.)

It's someone getting randomly assaulted, shattering the mood doesn't make it funny and infact kinda just makes Sumia look like even more of an unlikable person. (the Fact Chrom has real legitimate concerns, that are proven right none the less, just make Sumia incredibly unlikable.)

 

3 hours ago, twilitfalchion said:

I also find myself being like this. If I dislike something, I usually know it pretty quickly, and no matter how many times I go back to it it won't change my opinion. Case in point: Berwick Saga. Definitely an acquired taste in a game, so to speak, but one that is not for me. I've tried to like it and continue playing it, but I only end up frustrated. So I've (slowly) learned to stop trying to make myself like things that I won't and stick to what I do, haha.

Eh I tend to keep trying for another session or two if I'm really not liking something, usually a month or so after.

Sometimes I find myself liking it (Three Houses, Rising Storm 2 Vietnam and Rainbow Six Siege)

Other times not so much (FE Awakening, Tomb Raider 2013 and GTA V.)

 

 

[Your headcanons for anything FE-related!]

25 minutes ago, Gordin said:

 

Gordin x Kris is canon IS are just cowards

Nah clearly it's Xane X Kris.

Quote

So uh, can you turn back into Jaigen? -Kris on their wedding night.

Dorcas was actually poisoned but it was a non-lethal poison as a form of hazing from the bandits.

There is totally Pegasus/Wyvern Racing as a sport. (Mounted racing as an way to earn gold when IS?)

 

[Your headcanons for anything FE-related!]

I like to imagine Vaida and Heath ended up fighting in the Sacae/llia conflicts before FE6 but died before Roy got involved, possibly in the same battle that killed Lyn and other FE7 characters who don't show up in FE7. (I know this is a bit fanfic-y)

All of the "Wolt's Bow" and "Ephraim's Lances" in Awakening are actually from various gift shops at tourist traps.

Nils wrote and sang many songs about the events of FE7 in the other world through the dragon's gate.

Fernand is BI, I just kinda get the vibe he's into both Mathilda and Clive.

 

 

 

["Ask Fire Emblem Heroes Questions and Get Them Answered Here" Thread]

1 minute ago, Xenomata said:

In terms of the lore, no. Other books make reference to the events of Book 1 occasionally, but outside of a few battles in Books 3 and 4 and some lines near the end of Book 4 that reference the events of Book 3, the events of each book are fairly standalone.

Forging Bonds do not make reference to the books, but they do include characters you get for free at the beginning of each book, so while you don't need to have played that far into each book to receive the character, you will likely be seeing characters who you haven't met yet if you haven't begun a book yet.

That's just in terms of lore though. As with most games I assume, you are at a heavy disadvantage the later on you begin playing, as you have missed out on a good few years of powerful free units and free resources.

So at least if I play the books in order, there shouldn't be any issues?

["Ask Fire Emblem Heroes Questions and Get Them Answered Here" Thread]

It won't be confusing if I hop into FE Heroes?

It's not one of those online games where the game sorta kinda expects you to have been there since the start? (Characters say, referencing events from Book 4 even though I'm on book one or getting characters that only make sense later on.)

[What is your unpopular Fire Emblem opinion?]

6 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

On paper, Donnel has a tougher start - he has less move, and lower stats relative to the enemy. But, he exists in a game with Pair-Up - so, he can bolster his combat and mobility somewhat. And his growths are really good, even in the context of Awakening - whereas Rebecca's are just okay. Finally, Bows are really bad in FE7, while Donnel has good 1 and 1~2 range options, depending on his class.

They're both bad units in their respective games, but Donnel gets options to repair his bad start, and he can become a really good unit with training. Rebecca ends up... just okay.

Donnel I'm pretty sure only gets EXP If he attacks in pair-up and I actually got somewhat soft-locked and have to constantly restart my 3DS to farm random encounters since I tired to grind Donnel on my first playthrough only for the rest of the cast to suffer so much I got stuck on chapter 6-ish since everyone was terrible due to this (Not to mention how much of a pain it is to actually recruit him if you're new to FE.) and even when you are grinding him, he basically becomes  stat-backpack since there's no way you're using him otherwise in random battles  if you spawn and the majority of enemies are Wyvern Riders, which means you're effectively down to "Please get a dual-strike" for him to actually get EXP.

Rebecca doesn't require me to infinitely farm, can safely attack from range with a bow and therefore isn't going to immediately get killed by what she's attacking and I didn't actually have any trouble with using her, I never hit a point where I felt like I was suffering from using her and was actually able to easily use her the entire game without the rest of my units suffering for it while Donnel literally soft-locked me if it wasn't for random encounters and having to constantly turn my 3DS on/off isn't fun.

[What is your unpopular Fire Emblem opinion?]

30 minutes ago, Murozaki said:

Because again, the joke isn't that Chrom "deserves" to be punched, the joke is literally the fact it shatters the mood the scene had until then, Sumia herself apologizes immediately and the other characters laught not because "Hey Chrom is such a loser" but because again, it was completley out of nowhere.

Again, Chrom is not wrong for wanting to defend his country and loved ones and is never presented as such, what he's portrayed as wrong for is how his attitude only gives Gangrel more fuel to act as if he's justified in what he's doing. Chrom's flaw is that he's actions first, thinking later, while Emmeryn's issue is that she was the opposite when the ideal is both, it's not that Chrom shouldn't do anything and just sit aside, it's that he should think about the bigger picture, that he should keep in mind that Gangrel can and will use all of his actions as much as he can to justify the Plegians going to war with Ylisse, which he wouldn't do until Emmeryn's death.

That's literally just normal gameplay-story segregation, by that logic you may as well complain that Eliwood and Rebecca's father are bad people for incentivizing her to leave to join the Pheraen army when she was unsure of it since she also sucks.

Except Gangrel's clearly already made up his mind since the start of Awakening, he seems pretty deadset on what he's doing and I doubt Chrom pushed him anymore towards it.

And well, none of Chrom's actions get used to justify the Plegians going to war, it already happens and it's due to Emmeryn agreeing to that clearly a trap meet up and if Emmeryn had actually made sure to defend her country properly, well maybe the Pelgians wouldn't have actually managed to kidnap Maribelle in the first place and maybe Pelgian bandit groups wouldn't be a seemingly somewhat common occurance.

Rebecca at least is a class that stays somewhat out of danger and already was willing to fight (having fought those bandits of her own accord.), you can easily use Rebecca in FE7 meanwhile you have to use somewhat advanced tactics of boxing in just to kill archers with Donnel just to get him to even join, he's absolutely useless and can't even hit consistently unlike Rebecca. (and Rebecca wasn't essentially tricked with a nonsensical speech.)

[What is your unpopular Fire Emblem opinion?]

32 minutes ago, Ottservia said:

You’re looking at it too much from a surface level. Ask yourself this. How does Gangrel rally the plegians to his cause? He does so by reminding them of what Ylisse did to them in the past. He’s using that hate to rally them to war in order to enact revenge. Why is Chrom so defensive of Emmeryn? Because he doesn’t want her to go through anymore pain than she already has. He doesn’t understand why Emmeryn could ever forgive someone who hurt her in the past. He’s so focused on the past pain his sister went through that he fails to understand her ideals in the end. Again he is unable to forgive just like Gangrel. They’re both trapped in the past and are unable to forgive people as a result. The fact that Chrom is only able to hate Gangrel because of his actions is proof enough that he’s wrong. Even when he does kill Gangrel it’s not out of revenge but rather a duty to his people as a prince(it’s not that dissimilar to Dimitri, actually). In a way he was able to do what Emmery could not do. Which kinda goes back to what Robin says in that alone they’re not even half the person his sister was but maybe if they work together they can become something more.

 

Being consumed by and repeating the past is different from acknowledging the past and trying to correct it to move forward. Emmeryn does the ladder not the former. She is able to acknowledge what her father did was a mistake and she makes the effort to try and fix it so it doesn’t happen again. She wants to heal the scars of the past so that both Ylisse and Plegia can move forward towards a more peaceful future. Before her sacrifice she tries to tell plegia that their hatred for Ylisse won’t get them anything and that they should instead strive to forgive and move on. She wants to be able to build that peaceful world which can’t happen if all we do is hate each other for our past actions. That is the point of the story.

 

I mean he’s not necessarily wrong though. You know ninja back in feudal japan mostly came from poor farming villages, right? Even so it’s also just a general trope. I mean ever heard of the hero’s journey? Even so it’s not like he forces Donnel to fight. He tries to encourage Donnel, definitely but Donnel comes to fight of his own accord. 

 

No offense but I don't agree with this, at all.

It's kinda vague and basically ignores the actual actions of Chrom/Gangrel, Chrom doesn't do anything to actually escalate the war while Gangrel does everything he can, they're effectively polar opposites, Chrom's angry sure but he does literally nothing that escalates towards the war, it's kinda like you're looking way too into it while actually ignoring what would happen if everyone was actually like Emmeryn in Yilsse.

You're looking into themes while completely ignoring the reality of the situation.

Again, Emmeryn just gets her own kingdom's citizens killed, "Forgive and move one" isn't an option when the other dude is literally killing, kidnapping your forces and was sending bandits constantly, (don't they even say it's been for months?) Peace, quite literally isn't an option here, you can't exactly just bow your heads and hope a genocidal maniac isn't going to cut your head off because quite frankly, he's just going to cut your head off.

Emmeryn's ideals are flawed and don't work if you actually think about it, Yilsse would be literally burning and pillaged if everyone there believed in her ideals since Gangrel is clearly someone that can only be dealt with via force, she is quite frankly to me, a pretentious moron.

Again, what if Chrom wasn't around?...oh yeah, Emmeryn would have been killed and Gangrel would have took the Fire Emblem from her still warm corpse, oh and those bandits he was constantly sending in would have killed more, stole more and sold more women into slavery.

Donnel to me, was completely unwilling to actually join until Chrom presuaded him with a false arguement, Ninjas also weren't exactly big fans of direct combat, while Donnel is entirely frontline combat and again, the fact Donnel is the worst unit in FE on a gameplay front I think proves my point, your comparison doesn't exactly work since Ninjas were more of a stealthy thing rather than direct combat while Donnel is charging into combat as a unit who's complete trash.

 

34 minutes ago, Murozaki said:

You missed the point, those aspects are never framed as "Chrom is in the wrong for wanting to defend his country and loved ones", they are framed as "Chrom is in the wrong for playing into Gangrel's game", it's not about how Chrom is wrong for daring to be against Gangrel, it's about how he's wrong for his methods being exactly what Gangrel wants them to be to justify his own actions and emotions. So long as Chrom is using such violence for his ends it gives Gangrel both an excuse to not care about any standards and a justification for his own views of humanity as being all rabbid dogs. This doesn't make Gangrel less evil, but it does make Chrom someone that is not helping any matters.

And i don't get why you guys take the punch moment as if it's some big "problematic" stuff, you're all making it sound like this is some abusive emotional manipulation at play when it's literally just a typical "Snap out of it and focus on what's around you instead of getting hung up on your regrets" moment, is it partly a joke? Yeah, but the joke is not really "haha punching people is funny" so much so as that the punching is so spontaneous and out-of-nowhere that it completely snaps the somber mood of the scene in half, and again, even then there is still emotional sincerity to the scene.

Because Chrom doesn't deserve being punched, at all and it's not funny and all the in-game characters treats it like it's funny when it's not.

Besides, Chrom doesn't actually do anything to play into Gangrel's game, Emmeryn is the one who makes every bad call that allows the war to go off.

• Reduced Army so he can literally send in bandits constantly and get away with kidnapping Mariabelle out of essentially guilt for the past.
• Played into Gangrel's trap, literally only survived because Chrom protected her in self-defense, somehow thinking talking things through would work with Gangrel. (Who's clearly beyond that.)
• Then walked back into her clearly under defended (Considering how quickly it falls) capital and gets herself killed. (Til you do the spotpass and she magically survived because screw anyone actually staying dead in a Perma-death series.)

Chrom

 

He uhh....killed a dude in self-defense going to kill Emmeryn? AKA: Gangrel already effectively declared war.

Chrom played into nothing, unless you're effectively going to victim blame for self-defense, was he angry? sure, did he effectively do anything that escalated stuff? Not at all unless you think he should have just let Emmeryn get shanked.

 

Emmeryn is the one who quite literally made all of the mistakes that allowed the war to kick off, Chrom effectively is what stopped things going as bad as they could have gone while Emmeryn was literally about to effectively deliver the Fire Emblem to Gangrel because of her morals that don't work.

Gangrel already made up his mind about having war and quite frankly would have just lied and claimed Emmeryn's forces attacked first like he did with Maribelle, peace and understanding isn't an option when the other dude quite frankly already wants you dead and words won't do anything.

[What is your unpopular Fire Emblem opinion?]

9 minutes ago, Ottservia said:

I don’t necessarily blame you because it took me several complete play throughs to figure out all of this as well. Which is why I’m always of the opinion that you should re-experience the stories/media you’ve engaged in even if you don‘t like it. Another look with a greater focus on the specifics can lead you to realizing things you hadn’t before. Worse case scenario you reconfirm your hatred but at least now maybe you have a better understanding of why you hated that thing to begin with. Best case scenario, you connect details you hadn’t before and draw new conclusions which in turn allows you to gain a new appreciation for it. 
 

hell I used to think Fates was trash like everyone else. It’s only until a very recent replay of it that I realized there was far more nuance to it than I initially thought. Though if you want to hear more of my thoughts on that I have an analysis linked in my sig as well as a full analysis of awakening.

How though?

Chrome isn't  like Gangrel, at all, that's like claiming Eliwood and Nergal are the same.

Chrome doesn't actually do anything to try and set off a war, Gangrel has been trying to start a war for some period of time (I get the vibe he's been at it for a while), Chrom wants to gut Gangrel since he's an obviously evil ass hat trying to start a war, the past isn't actually effecting his actions as much h as you claim, I don't think Chrom would want to kill Gangrel if it wasn't for Gangrels actions in the present, so he's not actually super focused on the past.

I'd also argue Chrom tricks (unintentionally but it is with flawed logic the game itself proves right with how terrible he is) Donnel into joining up by saying  how Farmwork isn't different from fighting yet Donnel is the worst unit in the series and wasn't actually going to join.

If you ask me, Emmeryn is the one in the past, she's the one who essentially allows the bloodshed because she's allowing essentially family guilt to make her be extremely irrational, she's essentially got extreme guilt over the past and it informs all of her terrible decisions,she is as stuck in the past as anyone could be, I always thought she was irrationally ruling out of a fear of  being like the past, to the point where she effectively allowed her kingdom to be pillaged  due to bad leadership essentially out of guilt for being ylisse.

[What is your unpopular Fire Emblem opinion?]

19 minutes ago, twilitfalchion said:

No, I agree. There's slapstick, and then there's supposed humor that falls flat and is in very poor taste. That scene definitely falls into the latter, IMO. And it only serves to make Sumia look even less intelligent than the game already makes her out to be in supports.

It's even worse since it turns out Chrom was actually 100 percent right to worry about her, even a regular slap would be pretty reprehensible for me, it being a punch is worse but it's still horrible to randomly assault people. (It's not like Chrom was being completely hysterical.)

Honestly Awakening's early game feels unfair to Chrom (and I despise Chrom.), he's somehow treated as in the wrong for wanting to attack Gangrel, the maniac who's literally about to invade for any reason, who literally is able to kidnap a member of the shepards and threaten to execute them as a spy (Which btw, he could probably spin into grounds for an invasion.) yet somehow Chrom wanting to actually do anything about it is in the wrong.

I guess leaving defenseless Ylisseans dead is better than leaving them homeless and starving to Emmeryn.

Dunno if the game itself does it (Since I couldn't bring myself to keep playing after the Punch because I already hated the game at that point.) but I've even seen people blame Chrom for starting the war.

Apparently, Chrom is in the wrong for cutting down a dude charging to gut his sister and steal the Fire Emblem, and not Gangrel because that messed up logic makes sense.

 

[What is your unpopular Fire Emblem opinion?]

Sumia punching Chrom isn't some funny meme moment, it's pretty horrible and the fact the entirety of the cast find it funny just makes them all pretty horrible people.

10 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

I can't believe people are still going on about Priam and what that may or may not mean for Ike's sexuality. I mean, come on guys. Do you really care all that much? Awakening doesn't care all that much about it's continuity with other games. FE7 doesn't even care that much about its continuity with itself. Can't you guys just all write your own fanfictions or something?

Admittingly I'm pretty biased (Since I think Awakening is completely terrible) but yeah I pretty much consider Awakening 100 percent non-canon, I'm pretty sure it's retcons with Marth's game will annoy me when I actually work up the strength to get to them (since I only skimmed that list and I'll honestly probably have at least finished half of Marth's games before I get to them in Awakening.) and the hollow pandering of "Wolt's Bow" and other extremely shallow methods of pandering means I pretty much consider it Robin's terrible self-insert Isekai fanfiction. (Grima's backstory in Echoes is pretty much terrible fanfiction villian 101.)

[This game's difficulty is slept on]

42 minutes ago, Aethelstan said:

What difficulty are you playing on? You shouldn't be having those hit rate disparities as the standard for your army even on lunatic. Weapons triangle is a huge deal in Awakening, try never attacking with a physical unit unless you are at least neutral towards the weapon they are using. This is particularly true for Vaike. Also a lot of new recruits need to be hand held for a bit but grinding isn't necessary on Normal or Hard unless you want to. And some units like Cherche are very capable in their join chapters They often won't be able to one round enemy units by themselves the chapter you get them, but if Frederick, Chrom, or Robin is able to leave an enemy weak, use the new unit to deal the final blow.

Another tactic you will have to lean on heavily in the early game is keeping your units in range of as few enemy units at the start of the enemy turn at a time as possible. Sometimes this means progressing through chapters very slowly or even retreating back from your starting position in some chapters like 6. Awakening is meant to be played somewhat more conservatively than many other games in the series. You need to worry more about surviving an enemy phase than necessarily having a great player phase.

I don't think that dual stirkes are conceptually different from criticals. You have a small chance to do more damage than usual. It's something you have to factor in.

Some really good early game pair ups are Lon'qu/Vaike (they give each other speed/strength which the other desperately wants), Chrom/Sully, and Frederick/Sumia. Robin also pairs well with magical units.

Lon'qu and Vaike is actually what's been getting me killed in that stage with Ememryn's assassins, since I try to have them lock-down a two tile-wide hall way, except Lon'qu would consistently dual strike with Vaike, so the enemy is now dead, which means Vaike is now dead since his 1-range friend behind him that normally wouldn't' hit him, well, hit him and now Vaike's dead, and grinding Vaike invovled making him a stat-backpack as he's simply trash for me consistently. (I've never had this much trouble with FE6 Axe users but Vaike puts them to shame in sheer amounts of missing and still being made out of tissue paper.)

Yeah in my experience, Awakening just revolves around stats, it's more "can you out-stat the enemy" rather than any sort of actual out-smarting like in other FE games, to the point where there's literally temporary stat-boost items.

There's no real way to limit enemies, literally 90 percent of them are charging towards you and certain stages in random battles literally start with you in the middle and a horde of flying enemies surrounding you, there's absolutely no way to keep your frail, unlikely to dodge units out of harm's way when this happens, you're just screwed and either have to only use good units or reset. (Since you can't even back out of random battles if I remember.)

I found Grinding very needed simply to have my units survive more than 1 attack or even get a consistent hit-rate. (Hell I was able to breeze through that chapter, not by getting better tactics but by just grinding for a few level ups for everyone, which is a horrible feeling in a strategy game as frankly I despise grinding generally and I like it in FE because you actually just level up playing normally with the arena ultimately being more of a money thing.)

Awakening flat-out punishes you for using new units as you gain them, which is terrible in any game outside of new-game plus modes (Since at least there you're at least expected to use "Meta" knowledge.) and nothing's more "fun" than turning my 3DS on/off several times because I'm too broke to get a reeking box, getting a random encounter...and it's entirely 360 surrounded by Wyverns, making the battle luck-based as there's no way to really stop enemies dog-pilling me and making it so I can only grind my already good units with only being able to give a handful of them EXP to bad units via being stat backpacks, which is never going to be enough to get them out of being trash.

It's honestly gotten to the point where when I finally work up the nerve to play Awakening again, in about a year or two, I might just restart, put it on normal and casual because I'm sick of constantly getting screwed by at best 50/50 coin tosses for if my units die when a random battle, that I need to play because my units are trash starts with me surrounded by wyvern riders so it's literally just a massive coin-flip of dodge-tanking damage with characters who can't consistently dodge-tank. (Since actually taking the hits very much isn't an option after 1 maybe 2 hits.)

[Dancer Lord: Good Design Decision?]

4 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

You could also give no experience to your lord and kill off every other unit, which would probably result in a few unwinnable chapters. Every game, not just Fire Emblem, has unwinnable scenarios, and considering all these factors I don't think such factors need to be accounted for. Providing thieves and chest keys should be done, as should providing some powerful units throughout the game (filling a similar role to Perceval in Binding Blade), but I don't think it wise to get bogged down in extreme cases.

Yeah pretty much.

Almost every game in theory that has some sort of resource can get in an unwinnable/near-unwinnable state if you mess up badly enough.

It's just that usually going back to the last checkpoint/save-state is usually enough to bail you out.

While it's not actually needed that much (Since the game basically forces you to DIvine Pulse and has a lower unit count, not to mention the fact that Garreg Mach adds more than a handful of hours to replay if you do need to actually revert.) Three Houses having more than 3-4 Save slots would actually in theory help this, just add an in-game tip (Since people frequently forget to save in more than one slot) to maybe save in different slot if you win but take a few casualties, or I guess add a feature like ARMA, where you can "Revert" back to previous chapters and start playing from there.  

A Dancer Lord wouldn't really change anything too much in terms of "unwinnable" as you're pretty much screwed if you only have Roy in FE6 and he's probably not the only example.

[Dancer Lord: Good Design Decision?]

I'd quite like to see a support lord. (Dancer or otherwise.)

As for the two dancers problem mentioned earlier, maybe just making it so Dancers' can't dance for each other would fix it.

I wouldn't mind the Dance lord being able to fight as long as they were crappy enough so that it's more of a last-resort (Like Donnel except their combat ability isn't the only thing they're capable of doing and therefore not useless), I think as a general rule of thumb, dancing so a better unit can attack should be how it works most of the time. (Obviously it'd probably change in the late-game if you're funneling EXP into them but I'm okay with that.) 

[How do you think magic use should be approached in gameplay?]

7 hours ago, Father Shrimpas said:

Then might as well remove warp from the game/Series

Or just have warp be a limited staff.

[Any Series you got into because of Smash?]

Seeing the fact they put 3 characters from Awakening in it (Even if I'd never actually played Smash at the time.) was part of why I picked up Awakening a good while back.

[Soooooo what'cha playing?]

Getting into Smash recently, mainly been using Marth.