Samz707
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Posts posted by Samz707
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1 hour ago, omegaxis1 said:
This is strictly in the context of how Echoes is, right? Not in general? Otherwise, this type of thinking is extremely flawed.
Yeah in the context of Echoes, Alm isn't going to neglect the common folk and is infact willing to plow the fields himself.
47 minutes ago, Ottservia said:That still doesn’t change the fact that Berkut is still right when he’s not supposed to be as for the rest of your argument that’s kind of fair but that doesn’t change the fact that Alm would be unable to slay Duma if not for his royal blood because if it were not for that then he would never be able to obtain falchion which is the only way to slay Duma.
I get what you're saying but for me it's still ultimately that Alm being better than Lima due to being a commoner first and the fact he has to work with his allies/friends to get there means it doesn't quite ruin the point of the story for me since sure Alm gets the cool sword but without his friends he'd have never got there in the first place as shown in Celica''s nightmare.
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1 minute ago, Ottservia said:
That still doesn’t change the fact that Berkut’s claims go uncontested. Berkut says a commoner is not fit to be a leader and he’s never once proven wrong about that at all. We never see a commoner in a position of leadership. The only leaders we see in this story are of noble birth. And that’s not even factoring the Royal sword or the rigelian vault both of which can only be accessed/wielded by royalty. Alm is only able to get where he is because of his bloodline. Like he gets the better sword because he’s royal. He gets Falchion because he’s royal. His royal lineage is basically what defines his character and allows him to do these things which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but the story makes a point of saying bloodline does not determine your worth when it absolutely does by the story’s own logic. Alm is inherently better than the ram villagers because of his bloodline which is proven multiple times throughout the story. I’m not necessarily saying Alm is privileged either. I’m just saying the point the story tries to make in that bloodline doesn’t matter when there are numerous instances of Alm’s worth being determined by his lineage.
Alm is a good leader, yes, but that doesn’t change the fact that the story contradicts itself. It doesn’t change the fact that Berkut is right at the end of the day
Yeah Alm is technically Noble Blood but I see it as the fact he's more like a commoner is why he's ultimately a good ruler, (Not neglecting the poor like all the other royals, even Clive to an extent.) him being related mostly just stops the power vaccum that would happen otherwise in my eyes.
Gameplay-wise, while Alm wasn't terrible, I'd say the villagers out-class him for the most part gameplay-wise, so it's not like he's a super-soldier while they aren't (Unlike Robin, who shoots the "Power of friendship" message hard by having them be an OP superunit.), I generally found the other Village-kids more useful in gameplay. (And Celica's vision I felt kinda shown that he would not have won on his own.), so while he does get the sword, he's at least in my opinion not inherently better than the Ram Villagers on a gameplay front as I'm pretty sure an "Alm only" run of Echoes wouldn't be too easy, (Kliff in my experience as a Mage far out-shines Alm for the most part.) I admit I'm a big "Gameplay/story related" guy so in the case of Alm, the fact I really had to use others alot made it feel alot like it wasn't just because he was the chosen one. (While Robin feels even more like a Mary Sue self-insert when they're literally the best character in the game.)
I've not done the stat math but I'm fairly certain a Brave Sword is still technically better than Falchion for the most part. (Certainly much, much better against Grima, even against Duma a Dread Fighter with a Brave Sword does a ton more damage at once than Alm will generally do and can potentially soften him up to the point where Alm can one round him, which my Alm couldn't do naturally without a dread fighter crit to soften up before his plot-armor kicked in.)
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On 5/17/2020 at 4:31 AM, Ottservia said:
True but that still doesn’t change the fact that Alm contradicts that entire thematic through line and he’s the goddamn main character. Y’know the one person who should embody all the themes of their narrative. Again the story states numerous times that he is better than everyone because he was born a royal. The game makes a very big point of that meaning he contradicts what he preaches thereby making Berkut out to be right because he states a commoner cannot lead which is proven true by the story because the only leaders we ever see in this story are well nobles or those of noble/royal birth. Not once do we ever see a commoner take a leadership role in this story meaning Berkut’s claim go uncontested
I saw it kinda differently, Sure Alm is a royal (and the game hints at this in ways that are kinda overt.) but the way I saw it, the fact he was raised as a commoner in a villager is what ultimately made him the great ruler he ends up being, granted, I'm bringing the DLC into this but in the prequel DLC, the Harbor flat-out has a Rebellion that Clive and Fernand have to fight off due to the nobility neglecting the poor. (Also the Deliverence actually ends up screwing up significantly under Clive's Leadership at least once, with them having to basically take noble folk hostages and drag them off threatening to kill them if the enemy force pursues them, which does manage to explain why he lets Alm keep ruling even if the player messed up since even then Alm has arguably screwed up less than Clive did in the DLC.)
Alm however I doubt would neglect the poor, while Lima was content to neglect the commonfolk, Alm is quite literally willing to go plowing in the fields despite being a noble, he's going to try to fix Valentia himself instead of basically leaving the commonfolk with empty promises like Lima, the way I see it him being a member of Nobility really just stops the Power Vaccum that would happen when a Ruler dies without a heir somewhat (So people are more willing to accept him as ruler), him being a commoner at heart is what ultimately makes him a good ruler. (Even if he does get the mandatory magic sword that only the protagonist can use.)
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5 minutes ago, DriftingWaterBottle said:
If I understand your issues with "have to use fast-travel to move anywhere" correctly, you can teleport to a location that you visited before. For example, once you visited the dormitory area during the first monastery exploration day, you can directly teleport to it via the mini-map.
Yeah I just found that out today but if your small kinda fort-y area needs a fast travel option to be bearable, that's how unfun the thing is and you should have honestly scrapped it, it's so unfun that I'd rather be able to fast travel directly onto people because it's just such a lifeless area.
Not even interacting with people is fun because like I said, it's ruined by the frankly completely unfinished design of it, forcing me to lie to a character because you forgot to include a "Oh sorry, I didn't see the person you were looking for." when I talk to someone is frankly one of the largest dumb decisions I've ever seen in a game.
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18 minutes ago, whase said:
Let me start by saying, not trying to say you should like this game more, to each their own, but I was wondering if you could expand a bit on these points?
Isn't that exactly what could make the game harder? Give it that extra challenge you've been looking for? You could only do the quests that you find important, like the forge unlock which hardly takes a minute to do. If you find your supports or skills lacking, buy some ranks using renown.
I'm currently playing a no monastery run, and to me it's almost as hard as a maddening run. (That said, I enjoy limiting myself rather than have the game do it for me in every FE, but I understand if that's not your cup of tea.)
I thought you said you liked FE8, isn't that one of the easiest FE games there is? If you don't mind me asking, where lies the difference in difficulty vs enjoyment for you?
Have you complained about Thracia's replayability too? Haven't played that game, but for instance FE8 I know has about a third of the chapters in common, and I've never heard people complain as much about replayability as they do for 3H?
In which case, may I be so crass to challenge you to try a no monastery (or minimal monastery) playthrough? It really ups the speed and challenge, and I do believe the game was designed with this option in mind.
I myself may be too addicted to Fire Emblem to be held back by Three Houses its flaws, though I do see them. But for instance even in a game that does sidequests a lot better, like the Witcher 3, there comes a point where sidequests start to get boring. But so long as the sidequests are skippable there is no need to let them hamper my ability to enjoy the game. Look at the monastery phase as a sidequest, that might help.
The problem for me is that the Monestary feels like a thrown together Beta than a finish game.
The layout is very bad and Byleth's completely inablity to so much as drop down from a minor height is annoying, so you have to use fast-travel to move anywhere,
The quests are mostly boring tedious fetch-quests so far in my experience and it feels dead and lifeless with how you can barely talk to generics also you can clearly see people fade in/out of existence in a manner more obvious than a PS2 GTA game.
Most characters stand still, characters don't even get unique monestary lines for say, leveling up (Hubert just speaks about the battlefield despite the fact he hasn't been in the battlefield for nearly a month.)
Plus, you have the fact that you don't get to pick when you go there, so I can't skip out on grinding because I'll have to go back to an different save file altogether if i'm too weak.
Even then, considering other games have handled an open hub area outside of combat way, way, way better (Such as Deadly Premonition), its IMO, not that the monestary is side-content, it's that it's consistently low quality uninteresting side-content that gives stat boosts, it's the worst kind of side-quests where there's no actual interesting unique stuff going on, it feels just like padding but you have to do it because you can't exactly just stop before starting a battle to go grind.
It simply feels like it's something out of an unfinished indie game that actually makes the game's story/characters worse with it's poor execution, pads out the game time with filler content and in general is in my experience, completely terrible, every single thing it adds is bad in my opinion.
Before I played Echoes (and the good will of that game made me decide to give Three Houses a go), I figured the monestary would be a somewhat boring area where all the characters get in really cliche anime hi-jinks constantly, Even if I still had those low standards, what we actually got was worse, we got a boring large area where Byleth runs around doing fetch quests for an hour.
Having someone ask me where their friend is, then forcing me to lie because a "I haven't seen them" option isn't avaliable, is terrible design.
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24 minutes ago, Yexin said:
to bring you a personal example, Pokemon Fire Red is my most replayed Pokemon game, while i can't even imagine replaying Gen6/7 Pokemon games ever again
specifically about 3H, while it does have more replay value, it's ultimately irrelevant, when actually replaying, since many poor game design choices make it so boring and frustrating
yes, monastery is optional, but why would i skip the most marketed gameplay aspect of 3H? why would a game i'm playing frustrate me to the point it brings me to skip the single aspect that differentiates it from past titles?
the best and most optimal way to play a game should also be the most fun, but in 3H's case it's the oppositeYeah I pretty much don't like it, I'm on my first playthrough myself (really only checked into this thread because I'm curious.) but the Monestrary personally adds nothing actually worthwhile and just adds issues, it's only made characters worse due to poor dialogue (Hurbert always saying about "The battlefield can teach you" for instance, while not actually on the battlefield and Bernie never hides in the corner like her C-support claims, also she's real shy when I unlocked her C support super early on accident in the monestary.) and poor decisions (sorry Sylvian, I had to guess where Felix was when you asked because apparently the devs didn't want to let me just say "Oh no sorry, I haven't seen Felix today.")
I've even stopped playing today actually, I was bored after 1 exploration week, I have 2 more to get through if I want to play a battle, so I'm just playing a different game instead now, I have played for over an hour today and engaged entirely in essentially busy-work, it's a an actual chore to play to the point where I'd honestly just play pretty much any other game, hell, I'd rather do chores around my house and I've already developed a Hatred for the actual monestary at this point.
I can safely say the monestary is the reason I will never replay this game and if I do replay it, it will be definitely in about 3-4 years at least.
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1 hour ago, whase said:
I'm actually surprised about the amount of negativity in this thread. Not saying people who didn't like it shouldn't be saying so or whatever, but I'm just surprised. The game has been very well received by most of my friends and myself, despite, it's true, its obvious flaws.
While reading this thread, I also once again wonder how people feel replaying an older FE game. Is it really that much worse replaying this game vs an older game? If anything I'd say this game has more replay value than previous FEs, especially when using your renown well.
If someone doesn't actually enjoy the base gameplay in TH, they may not want to replay it, stuff like customization and such only goes so far (and can arguably takeaway from a game if it's poorly balacned around it.) if you don't enjoy the actual base mechanics, so if someone prefers how the older FE games, then they'd do that.
The monestary itself is a reason that more than a good few people wouldn't exactly be jumping to replay this.
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1 hour ago, ping said:
Kinda related to @Yexin's post:
"Strategy-RPG" is a bad term to file the Fire Emblem series under.Everything "strategical" about FE games already falls under "RPG". There's no economic planning, no diplomatic consideretions. Your long-term planning solely revolves around improving your characters and (to a smaller degree) item management - a.k.a. RPG elements. Otherwise, the games are focused on distinct fights that do not require any game-encompassing considereations outside of said RPG elements.
The much more accurate term would "Tactical RPG" (which I think is commonly used, too) or, if you want to be cynical, "Puzzle RPG" because the AI tends to be very readable and exploitable and hardly ever makes an effort to outmaneuver the player.
Technically, there is economic planning, it's managing your money and inventory. (Well, in the games like Fe7 where you can't always buy stuff and money is actually somewhat scarce, enough to the point where you can't buy tons of everything.)
You're mostly thinking of Grand Strategy games/resource gathering strategy games.
Men of War tends to be labelled as a strategy game and it's basically just all about the combat side and nothing carries over into later missions. (Outside of a small handful of missions in the very first game, Soldiers:Heroes of WW2).)
Codename:Steam also lacks those elements and tends to be labelled a strategy game as well as good few other games where the focus is pretty much just on individual troop combat.
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39 minutes ago, Troykv said:
Each time people talk about Three Houses here is sadness.
It makes me want to reconsider what I actually like and what should be liked.
Eh just because others don't like it doesn't mean you can't.
I like a good few games that tend to be wildly considered bad, yeah I do agree with the flaws most of the time but I can still enjoy it for what I enjoy in it.
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18 minutes ago, Shrimperor said:
People say 3H map desing is bad forgetting that more than Half the series has meh designs to begin with.
3H has better map design than FE4, FE6, FE7, FE8, FE11, FE12, FE13, FE14BR, FE14Rev and FE15.
So far in 3 hours, I'd disagree.
Yes, Echoes has simple maps but so far in the exact same amount of time there's been more actual depth, Mountain tiles that protect you but slow you down (And having an enemy with a shield show up early on, showing how effective they are at stopping attacks, which if you forgot to class-change like me are a rude awakening that you should really get at least one unit as a mage ASAP.)
Yes that one map with a single bridge is kinda simple but it still has depth in that the one-tile wide bridge is a chokepoint you can funnel enemies through, it's simplistic but there's still an element of capturing a strategic location than taking advantage of it.
The closest thing so far was a map in TH (First Aux battle.) where I literally spawned one-two tiles away from a grass tile, I didn't rush to the tiles so I'd have an advantage against the last few enemies like the bridge, I was on an advantage right away and just sat there, practically where I spawned, to have an advantage, same with the two-tile bridge on the Red Canyon map, you literally spawn ontop of a good chokepoint so there's no incentive to move up til' everyone's dead, I literally just sit at where I spawned and that's the optimal strategy for an entire map, never had to push up, never had to do anything other than the odd bit of healing and attacks, just sit at where I spawned and win. (I wasted 3 hours in a the monestary to literally win a map in less than 10 minutes by just camping at the very start.)
I'd rather have one good position on a map that I have to make my way towards than literally spawning on one that lets me kill all/most of the enemies on the map.
Even the first real battle, where you're told to "split up" has no real incentive to do so, there's a chest near one route and that's it, your only advantage is that you have a better spot to fight a single archer enemy.
Even the tutorial map of FE6 made it so you were seriously screwed if Lilina died since your boss was an armor dude who'd mess Roy up easily meanwhile literally no armored dudes to encourage magic users have shown up in Three Houses yet Mages have just sorta been "Archers I don't have to pay to get a new bow" so far.
Again, Third map of Echoes, dude with a shield that you'll seriously want to have a magic user defeat, so you have to single out a dude as a signifficant threat and it introduces you to the shield items, Third map of Three Houses, I sat at the bushes I spawned on and that was the entire strategy.
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13 minutes ago, Wraith said:
Damn. Looks like I’m going to have to raid my local liquor stores in preparation for playing Three Houses. If it’s that crazy I’m going to need to hit the hard stuff to get through the game.
You could just not play it.
I only even got since Echoes made me hopeful FE would be going in a direction I'd actually enjoy and I can safely say I was more disappointed than even before I played Echoes and assumed Three Houses wasn't that good. (Since even stuff that I didn't even consider they could screw up, like a mini-map, are completely screwed, It's pretty much safe to say I like absolutely nothing about this game I'm over 3 hours into.)
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49 minutes ago, Wraith said:
What are some of the things you love about FE that you feel TH stripped away?
This is going to be a bit of rant but here goes:
Pacing.
Yes, the GBA games have small maps, but you're in one-fight after another, so small, frequent battles.
With Three Houses, I play for an hour or two to get into a fight that's actually practically just as basic as the tutorial stage of FE6 and I'm over 3 hours in at this point and I've only been in 4 barely more than 10 minutes fights and one of them (my first Aux battle) was literally beaten by camping in forest/vegetation tiles at my spawn since I spawned with the enemies and tiles next to me so I basically just let the enemies suicide on my and barely actually played the strategy part of a strategy game.
Characters.
I think when I'm 3 hours in, I can compare the characters to another game I'm roughly the same time in, On FE6 so far, none of the characters have annoyed me, infact some of them (Such as Clarine) have actually made me interested in finding out more about them, I want to get supports to see more of these characters.
In Three Houses, I could give less of a pegasus dung about anyone, when the game asks you to pick your house despite knowing nothing about anyone (With the game's only real information being Blyeth knowing about Dimitri having a dark half because of this psychic ability called "Reading the script" because the writers are bad at their jobs.), oh maybe I'll get to know a bit about everyone when we're training for the mock batt- oh, wait no, the game just skipped all over Byleth's first week actually training everyone and Rhea is now asking me if I'm friends with my students, who Byleth has only interacted with for a week and I, the player have not interacted with at all, I swear FE manages to actually make the friendships between characters worse the more they try to focus on it so most of my students are ok with my mostly mute generic protagonist and way more buddy-buddy than most people are with teachers that have actual personalities in their first week.
As for individual characters, well Bernie magically now suddenly is ok with Blyeth despite knowing them for a small period of time since I got her C-support before I even had my first non-mock battle, so this shy character who's timidness was the only character I cared about, wondering how the devs would handle it, I no longer care for since clearly Byleth's protagonist friendship powers beats any sort of social barrier via the power of buying a girl spaghetti like once.
Lindhart killed someone in the first real battle, taunted them over it and then 180'd into "OH MY GOD I KILLED SOMEONE" Mode so he literally just flip-flopped between emotions because some programmer didn't realize you should disable the combat taunts if someone's supposed to be horrified by killing people so by the virture of this I have offically stopped caring about anyone since the game's developers clearly didn't because why should I get invested in anyone when it's clear the devs couldn't be bothered to put any effort in.
Florina's supports with Hector look like the Shakesphere of Fire Emblem Writing for shy characters compared to the C support of Bernie, if that C support at least took most of the game to unlock, I'd be fine with it but I've literally only been in a single fight with her at that point.
Tactics
Weapon Arts are just boring objectively better than regular attacks, as opposed to the HP costing and situational and overall more fun weapon arts from Echoes, Batalions are just boring super moves/stat boosts that should have been the actual weapon arts and the weapon triangle was removed and at least one fun spell (Thunder) has been nerfed to the point where it's pointless.and just a bootleg version of another spell. (Fire)
Visuals
It looks worse than Echoes, there's less colour, everyone's faces look terrible in Battles due to the jagged edges, up close in the monestary everyone's faces look terrible due to the awful nose outlines that someone who shouldn't be working on any 3D art thought looked okay and just in general, it looks bad, Echoes was a decent looking game that felt like it only didn't look better due to being on a 3DS while Three Houses feels like a game that's just barely better than that and only by virtue of being on a console rather than any actual talent.
Also the constant fade in/out of "Mook" characters in battles was a terrible idea, that only serves to highlight how little people are actually fighting (a fact I rarely noticed in previous FE games.), looks awful as people clearly load in/out of battle and if anyone levels up then you're going to see the generic dudes fade out while the camera is still zoomed in and in general the battles actually look worse than Echoes but they threw a bunch of fancy visual effects on scree for when you use stuff such as Curved shot, which only just makes it look silly when Bernie causes a mini-helicopter updraft over 5 time a battle since that's the only way to have Archers have actual range and never really was cool in the first place.
Deadly Premonition was a video game on the 360, it was lambasted for it's PS2 looking visuals when it came out. why do I bring this random game up? because it has a switch port and it looks better than Three houses in just about every way.
Oh and the mini-map is pointless, since it just shows Units by what weapon they have equipped, which considering this is Fire Emblem (With Perma-death and limited units and also because TH got rid of weapon-restricted classes anyway) tells me absolutely nothing about which unit it is, you HAVE 2D GBA-style art for characters in another menu, why not use that in the mini-map so it's actually worth a damn.
Performance
Somehow this runs worse than Echoes, I've had note-worthy lag when fully zoomed out, the Monestary lags constantly when you run (as the game stops Byleth running entirely to let the game load), characters obviously fade in/out of existence in it, Most characters can't actually walk which makes it feel super fake (Seriously even Postal 2, one of the most infamous "Worst games ever made", managed to have NPCs walking around and some more Dynamic behaviour that is not in Three Houses.) and just in general, the game looks bad and runs bad in my experience.
Again, Deadly Premonition, set in a small town and every single named character has their own unique little routine they go through every day, every character has their own unique path of doing things (Not counting generics who you'll see in certain areas/occasionally on the road), so Three Houses looks like a baby's first indie game compared to an actual indie game from the 360 Era that just had a Switch port and there are roughly 28 characters in Deadly Premoniton so I'm sure a triple A game like TH could manage to have a unique path for all your recruitable characters if they cared about having the monestary not be a massive time waster.
It pretty much does everything worse than the other FE games I've played, I think Awakening is a trainfire but at least in Awakening, I can boot up the game and try to enjoy a battle, in Three Houses, I boot up the game and I might spend an entire hour without any actual meaningful gameplay going on.
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2 hours ago, Ottservia said:
My personal issue with blue lions is that a lot of Dimitri’s development feels shoehorned? For lack of a better term. Like aside from the final fight with Edelgard not much of what happens is thematically relevant to his character. I like the scenes with Randolph and Rodrigue’s death but it just kinda feels those moments didn’t have anything to do with the battle that just happened prior(okay well Dimitri killing Randolph does make sense to happen at that moment). Like after the battle of Gronder, Fleche is just kinda there because plot has to happen. I’m usually not one to complain about stuff like this but like the scene in question has like nothing to do with what just happened in the battle previously. There’s like no connecting thread for why this event had to happen at this moment which just makes it feel shoehorned in and forced.
Yeah I don't like contrived bits either, while I doubt I'll get to Blue Lions (Since I'm on Crimson Flower and I'm seriously doubting I'll ever actually replay this.), Stuff like Edelgard's axe vanishing so Blyeth can get themselves killed is contrived as hell and the devs should have realized it was a terrible idea to do it.
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16 hours ago, twilitfalchion said:
I think FE needs to approach the naming of its difficulty levels a bit differently. Instead of calling the beginner difficulty "normal," it makes more sense to call it "easy," since that is the logical difficulty for those new to any game series to choose. Likewise, "hard" should be called "normal," as it's described in most FE games as "for experienced players." Normal FE players would be prepared for a difficulty like this because it's not their first FE game; they're ready to handle some challenge. And lunatic (or its equivalent) should be called "hard" because by its nature a hard mode in any game is tailored for advanced players looking for a serious test of skill.
That's a common issue in games in my experience.
In some games (Such as Oni by Bungie), Normal is still fairly challenging but not super-hard usually while in other games the Normal difficulty is rather Easy and the actual Easy mode is practically a cake-walk.
13 hours ago, zuibangde said:To add on to this point, the reason why TH (and SoV) are praised for its storytelling is partly due to the fact that it's fully voice acted. The voice acting helps the player to develop an emotional response much easier than reading the text themselves. I can't really explain it clearly but it's similar to why many people turn to audiobooks in real life instead of physical books. The content is the same but audiobook makes it seem that the book is 10x more interesting which makes it 'better'.
For me personally I did enjoy SOV partially because of it's voice acting but I actually do not like TH's story telling for various reasons. (Stuff like character's weapons inexplicably vanishing such as Edelgard's axe really annoys me whenever video games do that, if a plot point requires a character to suddenly be unarmed/poorly armed just after a level where they almost always/outright will be heavily armed in games it always bothers me..)
Also I feel like half the "Mystery" so far comes from Byleth just not asking obvious questions (Such as asking Jeralt why they shouldn't trust Rhea or not asking Leonie/Jeralt how they met.) which feels contrived and only makes me care less about the story when the writer has to literally just have the main character not ask an obvious question for a forced attempt at mysteray.
Also the fact that some of the new stuff just heavily back-fired poorly for me, Such as everyone getting a "first kill" reaction...except they didn't code the basic combat dialogue to be disabled, so I got this bit of dialogue from Lindhardt:
"It must be awful, losing to me." "I... killed them. What have I done? The blood..."
So Lindhardt taunts a dude after cutting him down with no emotional reaction then suddenly cares about the fact he's killed someone, that kinda sloppy stuff only makes me care less about the story. (So I actually consider most FE games not adressing the nature of taking a life for the first time better since at least they don't completely screw it up like Three Houses does.)
Your point makes sense but so far I would still rate TH worse than FE7 regardless of the fact it has voice acting in the story department since I didn't have anyone taunt a dude after killing him only to suddenly poorly go through the "I killed someone for the first time" stuff.
Then you have flat-out crap like Byleth magically knowing that Dimitri has an inner-darkness, because lord forbid the writers actually write some way to interestingly show off that maybe Dimitri has a dark half when your wonderful OC can just magically know it after knowing the dude for less than an hour because plot.
(Also Byleth magically becoming friends with everyone, off-screen, in one week is god awful writing.)
Yes Voice acting helps but if your script is terrible that's not going to fix it usually.
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28 minutes ago, Wraith said:
Huh, I’ve never heard of Jagged Alliance 2. Is it any good?
It's very different (It's a game about hiring mercenaries to liberate a Banana Republic and I guess is a bit like the 2D fallouts if they had more in-depth combat mechanics and not a whole lot of roleplaying, there is a demo floating around online, it's good but very unforgiving.) but my point was that it gives similar (And I'd argue, actually better.) training mechanics and it doesn't take hours to get into a battle.
Also instead of getting Battalions (Which were extremely underwhelming when it turned out they were just special attacks and not actually extra units, which I felt was kinda lazy.), you trained up the local populace to help fight back (So you essentially trained green units using the training mechanic.), it's still kinda meh (You can only use them to defend locations since there's a territory mechanic instead of being able to recruit them into your playable forces, at least not without mods so they're essentially just extra green units on defend maps.) but it's closer to what I think Battalions should have been. (extra forces that are generic dudes instead of a glorified special attack and stats boost.)
The fact it was made in 1999 only serves to kinda make me even more annoyed with 3H, since it's new mechanics (That I feel were done extremely poorly) were done better, by a probably smaller game studio, a long while ago on their second attempt (JA1 did have training but no morale system and even then it was just having a Unit not fight in the current day for a small increase in stats, the ability to have other units teach skills to other units was added in JA2 as well as the Morale mechanics.), I don't mind the odd small unpolished mechanic but when the entire selling point of your game feels more hollow than a game that actually had it more as an aside thing, it sorta makes me just want to play that game instead for a training units mechanic.
(In addition to 3H taking it sweet time actually letting you get to a fight, then taking it's sweet time to let you get into a next fight.)
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42 minutes ago, Wraith said:
Alright then it’ll probably end up being the best selling mainline FE currently available.
How so? Is it the fact that it feels more like Persona and less like FE because of the school setting and the in game calendar year? I myself have actually had a hard time getting into TH, despite having it for almost a year now.
Well for me personally, it's more of the fact the school adds very little, we've actually had similar "training" mechanics in Jagged Alliance 2 (released in 1999), except in that game you didn't need to spend hours stuck in a base just to get to a new battle, (And battles actually last a decent time in JA2, while any battle so far in TH ends way too soon to be worth the wait in the Monestary.) It also had a leadership stat, which effected how good a unit was at teaching other units (since units could either train alone or you could get a unit who was better at that thing to help train them.) and a Morale system. (Which can be basically summed up as "Motivation but it effects more stuff than just training.", So two units who are friends fighting together? they'll get higher hit-rates and Perform most actions such as sneaking/healing better but if someone's friend dies they'll be gloomy for a while and generally perform worse and maybe even quit if it gets low enough, it even had death reactions for any units who were friends/lovers/family.)
JA2 basically does what TH seeks to add better and with much less wasted time in menus/running around, If I want to train dudes in JA2 , I open up a quick menu, use a few mouse clicks and that's it, they're training and its' hands-off til' I want them back, I train in TH and I constantly click units then Press A to Praise which takes more clicks. (Also Press A to Praise is pretty much as bad as "Press X to pay Respects.")
The school basically just wastes your time with pointless busy work even when other games have shown how similar mechanics could actually be done alot more faster and more in-depth/better, I have played 3H for over 3 hours, I have less than a single hour of actual game time spent in battles, so it's a slog to just get into a single battle which is then over too quickly, I can set aside an hour to play and I'm lucky so far if I actually get into a battle.
(Also not a fan of the story/cutscene direction, the characters or basically any change so far honestly, like making Thunder discount fire and the visuals are kinda awful.)
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3 hours ago, Shrimperor said:
I think the reason why people burn Fates so much is that it doubled down on everything people hated in awakening.
Imagine if FE17 (or 18) doubles down on school aspects instead of story and gameplay aspects people liked in FE16. The reaction will be the same
Honestly I'd be kinda impressed (And definitely never buying it.) if they managed that considering how overbearing the school system already is for me. (3 hours in and not even a single hour combined time of battles which is just frankly tedious as sin, doesn't help the battles are as over as quickly as the GBA games once you actually get into one.)
If we really get another base system in the next game, I'd rather we got something like X-com where the base stuff actually matters rather than just throwing in some really not good fetch-quests/bad Avatar interactions, I'd rather manage a base with resources than "Talk to X Character and pick one of two options with the only long-lasting effect being one gives a support point." while running around grabbing blue particle effects for items.
The Avatar interactions in general in 3H aren't very good in my experience. (I get pretty annoyed anytime I pick a dialogue option, only for the characters to clearly speak as if I picked another dialogue option that I didn't actually pick.)
I'd rather have more buying resources, managing a source of in-come and maybe even recruiting new randomized units. (So like X-com I guess, just replace researching laser weapons with tracking down magical weapons/creating new magical weapons/spells and taking down UFOs attacking cities to stopping Bandit attacks/invasions.)
Honestly I think modern FE would benefit from borrowing more stuff from X-com, like being able to destroy defensive tiles with powerful enough spells and being able to shape the battlefield, Playing TH just feels like playing a worse Echoes (Such as the weapon arts so far being way more boring.) maybe you can set forest tiles on fire with fire spells so they actually damage units inside them and other stuff. (TH in general doesn't really feel like a console game.)
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15 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:
Maybe in the next game, they should disconnect the rewind-power from any given character, and just make it something that you (the player) can use. In the same way that they don't need to explain "Aha, Avatar-kun has the ability to see the extent of an enemy's attacking range!" It can just be a part of the UI.
And not to toot my own horn, but with a ranking system like I proposed, while your Survival rankimg may suffer in an Ironman playthrough, your "Preserving the Space-Time Continuum" ranking will be a free-and-consistent S. Thus providing a positive testament to your decision not to Pulse.
While I would like a ranking system, I wouldn't want it as something the player actually sees (at least, not on a first time playthrough.), rather if we must have yet another Avatar (And assuming they actually want them to be more than just a way to have 90 percent of the cast want to bone/praise the player constantly.), I'd rather have any after-battle praise be related to it.
So you'd only get praised if your in-game ranking was good and actively told to get your stuff together if you've started doing consistently poorly.
I've never really been a fan of "In your face" ranking systems since it always feels like I'm getting punished for not playing perfectly.
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12 hours ago, Benice said:
Most characters post-Kaga aren't really wearing proper armor or battlewear-this is not a Three houses- or Post Awakening exclusive problem. For example in the GBA era, aside from knights, wyvern riders and cavs, most characters aren't wearing "Practical" clothing. Pegasus riders, for example, are wearing miniskirts, which aren't exactly combat-appropriate, among other things. Clerics and mages have never worn armor post-Kaga era (And only specific classes wore armor in Kaga's day,) so Lissa is not the only offender of poor armor choice.
Plus, overall, the GBA animations were also quite over-the-top. Swordmasters come to mind as superhuman in their animations, not to mention Hector leaping around with tons of armor, etc. I'm not saying that the GBA animations are bad, (Because they're not,) but they're more or less the same a 3h with less detail. They are very much unrealistic. (And simpler too. IMO the biggest problem with 3h's visuals are how much it tried to bite off leading to low quality overall.)
I do agree with your point of simplicity is better, but saying that 3h is bad for unrealistic visuals compared to the GBA era isn't really fair when neither are gonna win any awards for being logical or realistic.
Actually I didn't mention it but I do like how Mages don't wear armor because it's actually reflected in their stats/role, they're not supposed to get in close-combat so I don't mind it. (Then you have designs like Charlotte in Fates, who despite being a close combat class is not wearing much armor and what armor she does wear doesn't actually protect her that much.)
I don't mind non-combat/non-close combat classes lacking armor but when a close-combat character is mostly lacking armor it just looks silly. (Such as Fem-Byleth who looks more like she strolled out of a modern day night club than an actual mercenary.)
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5 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:
In FE7, I thought Nergal makimg the player face something of a "Rogue's Gallery" was quite cool - and many of them were respectably strong. Nergal himself wasn't too much trouble, although his sprite and music were cool. In the next stage, I see what they were going for with the magic-users, but it's easy enough to stay out of their range (at least, sub-HHM). And I wasn't a fan of how the Fire Dragon disregarded Defense and Resistance (stats shouldn't just stop mattering at the finish line).
I liked that, Sain and Lyn got very high stats on my first Normal playthrough, to the point where they could kinda start curbstomping maps by themselves (Granted, it took well overt the half-way mark for this to happen.) however the Morph versions of old bosses were actually tough enough that I had to go back to proper tactics again, as Lyn/Sain would get absolutely destroyed if they took them on 1V1 so they were tough enough that I actually needed to have my entire army attack them together to safely bring them down.
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14 minutes ago, Jotari said:
Realistic animations can never be a thing so long as we have Pegasus and draco riders. There is no practical way to fight on those things with melee weaponry. Genealogy and Awakening come closest, with Genealogy giving them really long Lance's and Awakening making the mount pretty small, but both still run into serious realism issues (this is not necessarily a problem though).
Have you played Tellius? The load time between animation transitions just make them completely untenable for me. Fortunately the map animations look pretty decent.
Nope I've not played Tellius.
9 hours ago, Benice said:War mages wear armor-Of course, that is one kind of enemy that is FE4 exclusive and you (fortunately) didn't get far enough to meet 'em, I think.
I feel like they tried to do too much given what the team could handle within the time limit and with everything else they tried to do-Three houses was incredibly ambitious and visuals did frequently suffer for it. Three houses was delayed and still was released unfinished, and you can tell in many different spots-Maddening being the most profound IMO.
I think it's to the point where Echoes actually looks better, you don't have generic troops constantly vanishing/appearing, Character's faces in combat actually look better with less jagged edges and there's actually more color in Echoes intentionally dead and horrible looking Swamps than in the "Unforgettable" Red Canyon in Three Houses, which is actually the most bland location I've ever seen in an FE game, to the point where I'm semi-impressed at how dull a location it actually is.(And how the script keeps insisting it's somehow majestic/unforgettable.)
Sometimes the maps don't even look like they're the same art style to be honest in Three Houses, the Red Canyon looks like something out of a bland and grey "realistic" Modern Military shooter than an fantasy game, the map is almost entirely brown and grey.
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Fire Emblem: Three Houses.
I really don't like it, I think it's pretty much safe to say, that if something isn't like how it was done in previous Fe games, I think i's a bad change. (Seriously how do you even screw up a mini-map by not having it even show the actual units?, you have GBA sprites in another menu, just slap those on the map so it's actually not completely pointless.)
Fire Emblem 6.
Liking it so far, kinda surprised at how quick some supports go considering how it was in FE7.
Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness.
One of my favourites in the series, probably helps it's actually the least combat-focused game in the series.
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7 minutes ago, twilitfalchion said:
Tbh, FE characters have never really had practical armor in any game, apart from armor knights maybe, Kaga-era included.
I definitely don't fault 3H's visuals being the way they are because they tried to do too much. If anything, they didn't put nearly enough effort into the visuals and performance, with choppy frame rates and awful textures in some spots. They simply didn't make the best use of the Switch's hardware, which is perfectly capable of handling detailed environments and higher frame rates.
Yeah 3H to me kinda looks godawful, I do not like one bit of that game's visuals and it's kinda terrible when it's clear the game devs didn't even realize it, even Deadly Premonition 2, a game lambasted for it's graphics, has better character models in what I've played of both games.
Such as when you go to the Canyon early on and Sothis talks about how "unforgettable" it is while the actual map wouldn't look out of place in any generic brown and grey military game, it's literally a forgettable generic canyon level, there is nothing memorable about it on a visual level, it's literally almost entirely brown.
Not to mention how frankly awful the battle models look with how jagged they look, I honestly thought the game was glitching the first time I played and wasn't rendering the faces right.
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11 minutes ago, Benice said:
Most characters post-Kaga aren't really wearing proper armor or battlewear-this is not a Three houses- or Post Awakening exclusive problem. For example in the GBA era, aside from knights, wyvern riders and cavs, most characters aren't wearing "Practical" clothing. Pegasus riders, for example, are wearing miniskirts, which aren't exactly combat-appropriate, among other things. Clerics and mages have never worn armor post-Kaga era (And only specific classes wore armor in Kaga's day,) so Lissa is not the only offender of poor armor choice.
Plus, overall, the GBA animations were also quite over-the-top. Swordmasters come to mind as superhuman in their animations, not to mention Hector leaping around with tons of armor, etc. I'm not saying that the GBA animations are bad, (Because they're not,) but they're more or less the same a 3h with less detail. They are very much unrealistic. (And simpler too. IMO the biggest problem with 3h's visuals are how much it tried to bite off leading to low quality overall.)
I do agree with your point of simplicity is better, but saying that 3h is bad for unrealistic visuals compared to the GBA era isn't really fair when neither are gonna win any awards for being logical or realistic.
At least they aren't constantly having speedlines, dramatic close ups and wind effects. (Since wind effects and other stuff are actually saved for critical hits.)
I swear it's a thing in Modern FE games to drag out combat animations as much as they can and it just contributes to how tedious I find them to actually play. (I'm only on my third battle in TH and I'm already skipping the animations because they last too long while I was well over halfway through FE7 before I started speeding them with the emulator..)
My Main Issue with Alm
in Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia
Posted
Is he supposed to be giving into his own hate and lust for vengeance? I never really saw it that way.