Samz707

Mark. Can't die at all, clearly the best unit in the game.

Again, That's not how fighting works, You generally need a bit of training/the element of surprise and like I said, Donnel IS infact actually way too weak to be of any real use in that chapter, he literally gets one-rounded by almost everyone, if you don't want to recruit him you're literally better off having him stay behind, again, proper training is better than a trial by fire, Chrom isn't helping Donnel, he's being an idiot and it's only really by fortune that Donnel isn't dead, the actual gameplay mechanics pretty much confirm Chrom was full of bullcrap in his speech and the fact Donnel Is actualy considered generally to be one of the worst units in Awakening only proves my point that Chrom is an idiot here, just because it can work if the player is good enough doesn't suddenly make it a good idea. No, there wasn't even a rescue plan in the first place, everyone just went there. (if I recall Ricken was even told to stay behind by Chrom, since you know, child.) , Ricken decided of his own accord to do a rescue attempt when the characters should have recognised that a rescue attempt was needed before even arriving and organised to have some of the Shepards try to sneak up on Gangrel's forces (Since again, Gagnrel is sterotypically evil.) , you could even still have Ricken on his own by jumping the gun or something. If it doesn't bother you fine but to me this just makes Chrom an unlikeable callous moron who should have never been made Leader of any sort of military group.

Pretty sure you have people learn via training first, rather than just throwing them at armed bandits ready to kill people and hoping for the best, that's not "Helping someone get stronger" that's being rather callous about someone's life with a "Sink or Swim" mentality in my eyes, that's not how you help someone, that's how you get someone killed. (yes I know he has plot-armor if he goes down there, no that doesn't make it better.) Except Ricken is still the only one to actually go off and rescue Maribelle, which is the actually smart thing to do when you know the person you're going to talk with isn't going to let them go, if Gangrel acts even half as sterotypically evil before the game started as he does in the actual talk, then pretty much every single character (Yes including Emmeryn.) should know that talking to him is a lost cause and at best just use that was a way to stall him while they plan out a rescue, Ricken is still the only one out of the entire Shepards group to realise that a rescue mission is the only way Maribelle is leaving that talk alive and back with them.

Chrom comes off to me as surprised at the idea of Soldier's pairing up which is frankly absurd to me since you know, he leads an military group alread, as said before he also drags Donnel into life or death combat with an flimsy speech. (that gameplay promptly proves he was dead wrong about as Donnel basically gets beaten up if most enemies so much as look at him.) So yeah in my experience in the first quarter of the main story, it does not come across as Chrom just being kind to Robin when the same lack of sense applies to very nearly getting a farmboy killed, if anything it just makes it look like yes, Chrom is actually this stupid and probably is only the leader of the Shepards via Nepotism than anything else because he clearly isn't a good leader nor a fighter. Again, Chrom is also stupid on the subjects of Gangrel and Donnel early on. (Like I said, Ricken, an honest to god child, shows better strategy than either Robin or Chrom in that scene by recognising that just freeing Maribelle with force is the only actually viable way.) I'm pretty sure you could do a version of Awakening' start where A: Robin isn't as obviously suspicious to the Shepards, B: Chrom isn't impressed by basic battle tactics (You can have a character recognise someone's skill without being surprised by basic stuff.) and C : Donnel actually opts to join instead of Chrom persuading him with a flimsy speech that I'd take as a terrible attempt at manipulation of Chrom wasn't stupid in other scenes. Again, Optomism and trust doesn't require the other characters to lose braincells, It doesn't require Chrom to be somewhat Callous with Donnel's life, it doesn't require showing an actual honest to god Child be smarter in tactics than your actual Tactician character and it doesn't require basically everything that I have a problem with in Awakening' story/characters, I do not feel these instances of what I believe to be bad writing comes about because of Awakening's attempt at a lighter tone. You can have a fun postive story but the way Awakening does it entirely is just irritating for me and Chrom ends up being a frankly terrible character for me in the process. (The only way he could be any worse was if he could marry Nowi.)

You could just have Chrom not trust Robin as much right away, and on a story level, it's a minor fight against some bandits so I doubt it proves Robin's Tactical prowess and it combined with other things just makes it come as the game is sucking up to the player via Chrom. (and stuff like being surprised at Soldier's pairing up only further makes it feel like the game is just sucking up to you.) It's not even about being optimistic , it's just being nonsensical. You can tell a light-hearted story without having to constantly praise the player's self-insert. I don't think my complaints with the writing mean that Awakening can't be light-hearted/optimistic, I just think it does so poorly.

You can be light-hearted without making your characters act stupid though, I don't really think those are related. I don't think light-hearted and optimism means you need to have your characters act the way they do in Awakening, having Robin go through some amount of distrust wouldn't compromise the message and infact I'd actually make the whole friendship bond thing well, actually meaningful instead of Frederick being the sole person who distrusts Robin and is clearly ment to be seen as "In the wrong" I feel. (Also because ironically personally, Awakening's attempts to make everyone quirky and likeable...actually make them the most irritating characters in FE as well as making their bonds feel cheap when you know that they're able to literally S-rank almost everyone of the opposite gender, if everyone's friends to the point of marriage, then their bonds aren't actually special I feel also still no death reactions undercuts this even more.)

To me, having a character act nonsensically stupid to praise a player's self-insert is bad writing, bad writing in itself is subjective. By that logic we can't call almost anything bad writing since at least one person will probably like it. Again, thats why personally I hate Chrom since his entire early game (Which is as far as I'm able to stomach of Awakening since I really don't like it.) consists of "Robin gud" interspliced with moments of stupidity that I cannot believe anyone in his position would realistically make.

Yeah there's so many wacky anime-hi-jinks in Awakening that the game feels completely tonally disconnected with the whole fact that most characters can die. FE7 and Echoes didn't try to be this jokey so their usually wasn't a disconnect if someone died while in Awakening there's pretty much wacky hi-jinks in most cutscenes/supports in what I was able to play. (A little after Chapter 5) It feels more like watching a bad romantic comedy, which doesn't quite gel well with the whole "People can die at any time" thing when there's so many attempts at a joke that I'm probably more likely to get an out-of-place comedy scene just after someone got burnt to a crisp than otherwise which just serves to make it look like the characters can just brush off others die/getting crippled easily. For me, a character making bad choices, still has to be making bad choices that make sense in the context of the story. Chrom doesn't Robin is an "Able-Tactician" after the very first chapter, you know, the one where there aren't even any tile bonuses where it's just you versus a handful of dudes in an chapter that is pretty much just "Pray they don't get a crit" and uh....yeah that's the strategy pretty much, even when it was my first FE game, I was blown away at how nonsensical it was, Robin has in no way proven they're a tactician even slightly in that first battle nor does he do so in the entire first 5-ish chapters of the game. That's actually a big problem in what I played of Awakening, Robin, does not ever actually display an tactical genius in what I've played, instead he displays a basic grasp, that Chrom thinks is tactical genius except it's very clearly not so Chrom just comes off as an idiot. He's surprised at the concept of Soldiers fighting together, he leads a group of soldiers, So I find the idea that an leader of a military group who has probably recieved training, needing to be told that soldiers should fight together kinda absolutely stupid, then he goes on a weird odd tirade about how fighting together build's bonds which considering the context of that battle (Killing people at a border over a misunderstanding since I don't exactly buy that you can set a fireball to stun.) feels completely out of place and just outright bad writing, it'd feel awkward enough if we were just fighting Risen. By Chrom's Logic, Ricken must be a near godly tactical genius for realizing that just rescuing Maribelle by force instead of negotating with the obviously evil Gangrel who would never give her up. (Which actually only serves to make Robin, again, look like someone who isn't actually a tactical genius when they're seemingly behind in strategy to a literal child, hell if they made Robin the one with the idea of a sneak attack in the first place that would have actually made me start thinking Robin was actually a Tactician but no the literal child gets the one bit of actual strategy in the first quarter of the game.) Then you recruit Donnel where he does a completely stupid speech about how "A sickle isn't far from a sword" and how the "Principle is all the same.", the gameplay then proceeds to prove that Chrom is completely wrong when Donnel can be one-rounded easily by literally almost every enemy on the map so Chrom's speech that already makes no sense is proven completely wrong by the actual gameplay, which just again, makes Chrom look like an idiot who literally only was made the leader of the Shepards because of nepotism rather than any sort of skill since he so clearly lacks any skill in leading and sucks as an unit in-game. (Also for a group about protecting the innocent, good job presuading a clearly inexperienced farmer to risk death Chrom.) Chrom comes off as completely incompetent at being the leader of the Shepards and just in general an obnoxious character for me, nothing he does makes sense in the context of the story for me, they're contrivances so Robin can be accepted and praised because he's the player character, they don't at all feel like anything someone would actually do or say, just contrived stupidity so we can get Robin accepted into this group that really shouldn't accept him right away as fast as possible because I guess a slow paced beginning like Lyn mode where the stakes are actually low so Robin being trusted when the stakes get serious isn't something Awakening wants to actually do.

They're still less young than Ricken and at least have personal stakes. (Boey and such didn't even actually set out to fight, they were just headed to Mia's temple, they fought out of necessity at least while there's no real reason why Chrom can't just take Ricken home and get an actual adult mage from his army, Celica isn't seemingly actively rejecting the possiblity of taking an actually trained adult instead of a child, they're her friends, who are also trained to fight and they weren't even really intended to do half of the fighting they end up doing, to the point of recruiting Saber for the purpose of fighting rather than willfully endangering children when there are better options, there's a difference between "Forced to fight" and "Well, I could go get an actually trained professional or have a small child fight and possibly die for me.") Ricken doesn't even look like he's a teenager yet which makes this especially egregious to me, he looks younger than Lyn and she was only 15 in the original Japanese, it wouldn't surprise me if he's barely 12. You've also got the fact clearly much older characters can S-Rank Ricken, which is just kinda disgusting.

I agree but I still tend to associate the characters with the writing, I still know it's the writers but if a character consistently acts like a poorly written character. (Such as IMO Chrom.) then I tend to associate them with it. While I've not finished FE Echoes, I don't have the same associate of bad writing with Celica, Yes she does act kinda mighty stupid for the sake of the plot but because she's not normally this stupid, I just associate it with bad writing since she's actually a decent enough character for the most part while if a character's entire..well...character can be the writing that annoys me, then I think of the character and writer.

From FE: Chrom Because he looks like an idiot when he's surprised by Robin suggesting an army fights together for the tutorial on pair-up, his animations look stupid (I'm all for rule of cool but you kinda need some restraint, when someone sticks a sword in the ground, even when they're currently in a sword fight with another dude, that's not badass, that's being a dumbass.), He just comes off as a Vanilla incompetent so we can praise the player character, character and that's not very appealing to me. Robin: because Avatar-worship (he's overpowered in gameplay and the interactions with him and the Shepards from the start are pretty much him being trusted/praised a large amount because of being the player character in way that feels super artificial.) and the whole "Having other characters breed for child units" thing never sits right for me (I'm a person who generally believes how you play a game reflects on the protagonist so if you're checking over what stats someone's children will have, that comes across to me as Robin doing that.) Honestly the attempts at a lighter tone/everyone can romance everyone thing from Awakening...doesn't really reflect well on everyone, when characters are actively getting in anime hi-jinks after Lissa just got permanently crippled from an axe to the spine, that sticks out to me even more than just the character's not commenting on it and the fact that most of the Shepards can engage in a relationship with an underage/visually under age character, well, it honestly it basically makes it impossible for me to like someone when I know they're potentially a molester so the game kinda makes the entire playable cast look like not very good people, so yeah, the fact most males/females can opt to be in relationships with Nowi/Ricken is kinda a completely unforgivable thing for me so the mechanics of Awakening kinda make almost the entire playable cast irredeemable for me. (And the individual character writing makes me hate Lissa and Virion though I don't think those two are popular anyway.) (And if I took Heroes as canon, which I don't, which lets you deploy very young looking versions of the FE1 cast now, then I'd hate everyone who's a unit in Heroes because then they have no problems with literal child soldiers it seems.) As for non FE characters: Reboot Lara Croft: She's just a pretty bland character in, her "character development" basically consists of getting beaten up for the most part and just in general she's an uninteresting invincible hero, getting hurt on-screen and crying about it doesn't feel genuine when 5 seconds later in gameplay, the injury has magically vanished, it just starts feeling exploitative when your main character is constantly beaten up-close on-screen then fine afterwards and when it's not that, she's got plot armor because the usually "Kill them on sight" bad guys don't just shoot her when they catch her, multiple times. (She's literally killed over 50 of them at one point and it's the second time they've captured her but nah, don't even take her weapons away so when she escapes 5 seconds later she can just start killing everyone again.) So I basically can't get invested in a character when the plot is bending over backwards. (Also, she's an idiot who uses a bow, against a large group of pistol instead of a semi-automatic pistol she already has in this section in a cutscene.) to keep them alive regardless of how stupid they act. Big Boss: I like him in MGS3 and Portable Ops but I feel after that he basically became a worse character, his entire plot-arc in Peace-Walker is a bad re-trend of MGS3 (Which is extra bad since with the way the plot unfolds, you could probably remove his contrived "Arc" and just have him be motivated by other stuff in the plot.) and his ability to recruit enemy soldiers goes from "Presenting them with evidence that their person their working for is actually going to nuke their home country" to.....He's just that cool I guess that every single soldier in the world will abandon their country to work for him, every single one which is just kinda silly, in PW, then really silly in MGSV which is trying to be more serious yet the exact same filmsy excuse is used so he sorta gets worse for me while others love him in Peace Walker and MGSV.

I guess just ones with characters I can really get invested in, I'm generally not too picky on what stories, I've loved wacky ones with a party of adventurers (Konosuba), I've enjoyed kinda dark ones about futility (Pathologic) and I've enjoyed pretty much excuse plots. (Such as the PS1 Tomb Raider games.) I also like plots with somewhat evil/morally grey protagonists but it is also kinda has to be deliberate to actually work for me, a story starring a somewhat conflicted individual is fun while a campy adventure that has a protagonist that is ment to be a loveable generic hero but completely unintentionally comes off as a completely horrible person (Such as the Shepards in Awakening for various reasons, such as the adult women marrying the clearly underage Ricken..) that I'm actually supposed to think of as a "True" Hero royally annoy me and also "Gritty" stories that actually just translate to blood and guts everywhere to be "Mature" such as Tomb raider 2013 also annoy me.

I actually like Nuibaba's abode and how it actually blocks off Nuibaba from just being rushed with Cavaliers. Granted I play a lot of PC RTS games so I'm kinda used to a single Map taking a very long time to clear and it does kinda become impossible if you lose certain units. (Though you can technically skip it I guess.)

Considering how Awakening put me off the series for years, SOV is a very easy pick for me considering how Its pretty much the only 3Ds FE game that I actually enjoy. (I'm even a weirdo who actually enjoys the map design and thinks Nuibaba's abode is an actually kinda fun map, If admittingly not very well designed for if you've lost Silique though I guess it's technically optional.) As for 3, I really only played a small bit so far of Codename:Steam but that actually appeals to me rather than a Dynasty Warriors clone.

Wasn't aware Randal is from Elibe. I kinda hope that isn't canon (I mean their card game characters so probably not.) as I'm not a big fan of "Everything needs to be linked" trend.

Oh okay, didn't get far in Awakening. (And I doubt I'll ever play any of the DLC and I didn't think Time Travel was just something people could just do willy nilly.) So in other words ,we don't know where Fates is set relative to Echoes?

Yeah I know, I'm just wondering if they're actually still from the Fates locations and simply travelled all the way to Valentia or just simply born in different locations in Echoes.

I'm just kinda curious since the wiki claims they're from locations from Fates and Fates seems to be after Awakening. (So it'd be a large time paradox for them to be really far in the past.) Are they simply alternate universe versions of themselves from the Card Game just existing in the Echoes Continuity? I know it doesn't really matter I'm just curious if they're still their Card game selves. (So still from the Fates locations,)

I feel like I wanna say Lyn but I admit I'm a bit biased due to actually really liking her story bit of FE7 (Since I actually like how it's a smaller scale thing and it's kinda a breath of fresh air as there's no big world ending threat, yet anyway.). Just a few slightly organized dudes overthrowing an evil ruler in a somewhat small scale conflict is actually something I wish we saw more of considering how every threat in fiction needs to be world ending and they always want you to know as soon as possible. (It's nice to actually have the stakes desecalate for once.) So yeah just having this kinda more I guess ordinary protagonist who goes through what feels like more of a personal journey with lower stakes was really enjoyable for me. I have no idea if this is normal for Normal mode but my Lyn actually got so good stat-wise, that if she was on a forest tile from roughly Battle Before Dawn onwards, she could almost never be actually hit, the enemy chance to hit would be zero mostly, which ment I got alot of use out of her as this nearly untouchable sword unit so a unit with a pretty much zero chance of dying for a good chunk of the last third of the game was incredibly useful. (Granted, the Morphs in the final map were tough enough to the point where this stopped being helpful.)

Anime really is just "Japanese animated" so it doesn't really dictate the theme/style or pretty much anything about it though. Ghost in the shell, Konosuba, Jojo and Space Dandy are all technically anime but are world's apart in basically everything but "Made in Japan." If you mean the sterotypical anime that's used as an insult, then really only Awakening (and what I've seen of FE Fates) really feel like one in my experience, FE7 and such feel like fantasy stories that happen to be Japanese rather than intentionally trying to be sterotypically Anime. Personally, I do actually dislike characters in any sort of serious work walking off injuries, I can tolerate it occasionally as long as it doesn't stretch my disbelief but that's more "character got thrown across a room or stabbed in a kinda important part but can just barely keep going" rather than "Character just got directly hit by a fireball, hit with arrows then critically hit by a lance." It's not even an "Anime" thing as there are works that try to be serious (Such as Tomb raider 2013) that have their characters very obviously have plot armor and it annoys me there too. Fe Echoes and Awakening kinda show this by just comparing Celica's drastically different design in both games. (or just compare Female character design in general in say, FE7 compared to Fates.) They're both technically anime but they're not really the same style. I think for a perma-death series, you should try to generally stick to a "People die when they are killed" rule for the most part, it sorta cheapens any dramatic moments when it feels like characters could survive pretty much anything and makes the entire perma-death thing feel arbitrary and only included because the previous games had it when tons of people have plot armor, 'cause if people are generally going to not die, why have perma-"Death" in the first place. (Again, such as Awakening giving most of the females plot armor.) Again, seeing that character who I just set on fire, fired arrows at and stabbed just standing up perfectly fine when much, much less would generally kill most other characters comes off as contrived when I SEE them fall down "dead" in combat then bam, they're fine not even a minute later. I feel FE actually kinda makes it even more obvious than most since well, I'd imagine fireballs, Lightning and other magical attacks to be pretty damn lethal. (and in games such as Echoes they really, really are.)

Reminds me a bit of Close Combat a bit. I would definitely be interested in an even more strategy focused FE game.

It's not my only reason but I don't want to play that FE/Persona crossover because it has Chrom and Virion in it and they're kinda my most despised characters in FE and therefore A: I really don't like them for a variety of reasons so I don't want to see any more of them and B: if the writing for any other new characters is even remotely like Awakening's, that probably means I'd want them all to die in a fire an hour in. It's not my only reason but It's the one that can probably be considered silly.

Personally I pick Hard since I play strategy games for a bit of a challenge. I am a bit not a fan of how apparently the harder difficulties in new ones just consist of OP enemy stats, I'd rather it do that via challenging map design. (Yes I am on of the 5 people who actually likes the Map design in Echoes for the most part.) Adding random nonsense like random enemy skills that can potentially screw me over isn't strategy, it's RNG and heavy RNG in strategy games is something I actually hate. (Hit chances? sure but for the most part leave the RNG to hit-chance and hit chance alone please.) I already kinda dislike enemy crits a bit. (I don't mind it in say, FE7 Normal mode where it's at least mostly kept to bosses and regular enemies tend to have low crit-chances unless they're specificly using a killing edge weapon, since then it's something you can work around but when you have Awakening, where I can potentially have the exact same tactic fail, in the very first stage just because an enemy mage got a 10 chance to hit on Robin and I don't really have any other tactics to do, well, don't do that.) When I have to restart your first stage, twice. (not in the same playthrough as I restarted Awakening.) because of RNG, your "strategy" game isn't very much actual strategy. (No matter how many times Robin claims otherwise in that one quote they say.) So I stick to hard and doubt I'll ever increase the difficulty even on repeat playthroughs because I think strategy games should be generally somewhat consistent.

It's a perma-death series so I kinda think it should go both ways. Echoes just barely manages to somewhat excuse Fernand/Berkut getting away by being on a horse and even then I feel it starts feeling contrived when they've "retreated" more than twice. Meanwhile again, Bandit Dude from TH opening, we beat him up in regular combat then Byleth via cutscene powers sends him flying in the air...then somehow, he shows up alive later, did no one check the enemy was dead?, it felt contrived enough when he could sprint at Edelgard after I had her cut him up with an axe but nah, he's just fine. Same with other fights such as Raimi in Awakening, sorry but I do not buy, even with healing magic, that I can burn, stab, arrow and do other sorts of highly lethal methods of attack on someone and then in the cutscene afterwards, nah, they're fine, not even acting like it hurts them or any ill will towards the protagonists. (After all getting hit by a fireball is comparable to a getting a pillow thrown at you apparently and getting a lance thrusted into you is no big deal.) Erik in FE7 at least is actually not able to fight and is captured due to being heavily injured, rather than suddenly showing up fine later inexplicably, I'm fine with that as long as it doens't happen too often. As someone who does enjoy some Manga/Anime, (Such as Ghost in the shell or Jojo), I actually do dislike it when characters survive injuries that really should kill them/walk off serious injuries, Ghost in the shell Standalone Complex (A TV series) actually goes out of it's way to show how the cast don't really walk off injuries, one character spends a decent chunk of time in the hospital after getting heavily injured in an action sequence and two other characters who are Cyborgs are shown having to actually go get a new body/parts for their body after getting heavily damaged in fights going wrong, they don't suddenly appear fine after a scene transition. In Fe7/Gaiden the over-the-top animations are generally saved for Critical hits, so they're kinda cool in that they're rare even when they're kinda silly, the characters are not shown to generally fight in silly over the top ways so the silly flashy animations are actually cool since they're a rare treat that lets you know the poor other dude is about to probably not be alive for much longer. It's like explosions in an action movie, they tend to get boring if they're done over and over, the rare silly animation that kicks in when a critical hit animation happens is alot more exciting then characters suddenly fighting like bad anime characters in cutscenes. I don't really get the sense in FE7, Gaiden or Awakening that any of my characters are extremely super-human, I get the sense that maybe a small handful of them in the tank roles are a bit stronger. (Such as Hector/Valbar) but I can't see Eliwood, Lyn, Chrom or Robin having any sort of super strength, if anything I get the sense that lyn,Eliwood and Chrom are kinda weak considering how regular bandits can easily kill them. They don't even look fluid IMO, infact some of them kinda look awfully static. (Such as Lucina saving Lissa in Awakening at the start...by crouching down with her sword on her back, in a really stupid looking position to block the Risen's sword in a way that should not have worked.) , None of them I've seen are impressive fluid fight scenes, they're just fight scenes where everyone does really silly jump attacks rather than any sort of flashy fast swordsmanship, just jumping towards each other actually looks worse than any sort of dynamic fight scene with proper blocking/use of swords. The actual gameplay animations actually look more like actual combat, especially in Echoes with having multiple animations, a round of combat in Echoes actually looks better than the bad future Rudolf vs Alm fight as characters dodge and attack such as Mycen dodging an attack then having his horse kick the enemy as opposed to just two people jumping at each other over and over, the actual in-game animations actually look more varied and exciting than any pre-rendered fight scene I've seen outside of TH's opening CG fight and so far that's really the exception and not the rule.

I reckon this is probably unpopular. (Also sorry if I already said this as I can't remember if I stated this before on this site or not as I've said this before on another site and I'm kinda terrible at remembering where I have/have not said things.) I don't like pre-rendered fight cutscenes in the series, in my experience (first bit of Th, Echoes, Awakening and Fe7.), they tend to have character performing silly jumping attacks where they leap leg-breaking heights in the air (Such as the Marth and Chrom fight or even just "Marth"'s introduction where they jump from lethal heights out a portal but just fine.) or even knocking others flying into the air. (Such as Byleth and the bandit leader dude in Three House's prologue, which he survives because plot-armor is a totally not obnoxious thing in a perma-death series.) In Echoes case it even sorta detracts from the Rudolf/Alm bad future fight since it looks extremely out of place in the scene and kinda ruins the serious tone a bit. At best, I'm indifferent (Such as Echoes) while in others it's sapping my already limited interest in the story. (Awakening.) Someone kicks someone's ass in a cutscene? they did it purely because it's a cutscene and it doens't feel like it reflects gameplay, at all, the magical world of pre-rendered FE cutsscenes feels like Faye from 6 could beat the crap out of Rudolf in hand-to-hand combat because the plot said so. Jaffar's introduction however, which has him killing Lelia in-game with I think his actual in-game stats (Yes I know technically the roll is rigged but you know what I mean) had me kinda terrified of fighting him, I saw how this character would destroy my own units in-game, It felt like a scene reflecting on how it would actually go down if he say, got an attack in on Lyn, I was honestly terrified of the prospect of fighting him and was relieved when he becomes an ally without having to fight him. Actually seeing someone's stats in action is a whole other story than seeing someone's purely cutscene plot powers in action. (Also they fight like actual warriors like they do in-gameplay rather than crappy anime fight scene stuff like in the cutscenes I mentioned.) So I feel having in-game battle cutscenes, that show their actual in-game stats are actually A: less stupid looking and B: can do alot more to make an enemy boss seem alot more of a threat.