Samz707

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.

Can't remember her actual stats but the Lyn on my Normal mode against most enemies on a forest tile late-game (After Battle before dawn roughly) would have them have a 0 chance to hit against her. I don't know if that's common but yeah, a unit who the enemy couldn't even hit if she was on a forest tile was godly.

Play Echoes. Awakening is just a tedious slog to play due to how easy it is and how utterly terrible i find the story so I wouldn't even recommend playing it at all. (and according to a friend who had the misfortune of assuming the series was terrible due to having Awakening and Fates be his first games, Fates isn't much better.) So by virtue of being the only FE 3DS game that I can actually bring myself to play, at least play Echoes first so you're starting with a good one. Long story short, I really, really like Echoes but really, really hate Awakening. (I've owned Awakening for 3-4 years at this point and still not finished it since every time i see it in my DS case I just want to play anything else since I hate it that much..)

Wow that actually sounds god-awful. I got annoyed when Three Houses had Edelgard's axe vanish in the tutorial so Byleth could get themselves killed, If I was a fan of the series at the time and played Fe1 and 3 before Awakening and got to those points I would have been even more pissed off at the game than I already was. Is it really that hard for 6 writers to at least try to stick to basic continuity?

Wouldn't Hurt. I'd use a Mark Avatar, even if it's literally just his FE7 Sprite.

I guess it depends on the game? I kinda like the GBA system since you have to think about Promotions. 3H adding luck sounds kinda bad, one of my problems with some strategy games (Such as the reboot x-com games) is adding Luck elements for the sake of them which just ends up being frustrating rather than actual strategy.

Men of War: Vietnam I've always had a soft spot for the Vietnam war in fiction. (Since I think it tends to lead to somewhat interesting gameplay.) I quite like how Men of War handles troops compared to other RTS games. (Giving them a full inventory system and the ability to even directly take control of one, controlling them like an istometic shooter which you can use to have them fight more effectively.) There's even a decent armor penetration system where you can repair enemy tanks that you've not fully destroyed so you have more vehicles though the Vietnam-themed expansion. (Since the series is mostly WW2) doesn't really permit doing this.

Dunno how popular an opinion it is here but I don't really think Awakening is a good game for beginners. Sure it's easy but with Pair-up, Robin being overpowered and the simple maps, it reaches tedious easy for me, where it's actually kinda boring to play and it feels more like you're going through battles on auto-pilot rather than really doing any strategy. The more quirky tone isn't exactly something I think is exactly good and for first-timers like me coming off other strategy games (Such as Jagged Alliance) , it only serves to make it look like FE is a series where the Perma-death is extremely shore-horned in. (Yes I know it's a problem in most FE games but the increased amount of Comedic moments makes the lack of death reactons stick out like a sore thumb when characters are not only not reacting to people being crippled/killed but going right back to their wacky antics without missing a beat.), In addition to well, not everyone kinda enjoys this comedic anime tone so if you're like me and you really don't like the kind of humor Awakening is going for anyway, having it happen after what should be dramatic reactions to deaths is only going to make you not like the cast more. Robin also felt player-pandery even as a newbie, as soon as Chrom wanted to have Robin lead the shepards after the first level, I had problems. (Since I don't really think it's logical and it feels alot like Robin's getting special treatment because hey they're the player character which had me kinda staring at my 3Ds in surprise because I was utterly baffled by the turn of events that just happened.) I actually assumed Awakening was something like Syphon Fitler: The Omega Strain or the later-released Sonic Forces where it's just your newcomer character in a pre-established group of characters simply because it felt that out of place since it came across as awkwardly slotting a self-insert character into a pre-established group of characters to me. While I can't vouch for the entire game (Since I've actually not finished Awakening since it was that off putting and even when trying to return to it I don't really enjoy it though I have looked up late-game plot points and they don't exactly inspire confidence.), it doesn't exactly help that Awakening's early plot points are kinda...dumb, A Warrior kingdom....that entirely shows off it's strength by not actually using any of their own people, which is like an arms wrestling contest where neither of the contestents actually do the arm wrestling themselves (So it doesn't actually prove their strength at all.), you have Virion gatecrashing an entirely serious scene for some really unfunny antics and you have the really dumb scene with Maribelle at the Border which just makes it look like Ricken should honestly be leading the shepards rather than Robin so for a newcomer I really stopped enjoying the story from the start then it sorta only had me get even more confused as it went on, not because it was confusing but because everyone was acting absurdly stupid, Chrom, a leader of an army, is surprised by Robin suggesting units fight along side each other in a tutorial and even goes on an awkward tangent about bonds for the support system, which only serves to make him look like an idiot and for me, made it so I kinda disliked him right away. So with a story that feels like watching annoying sterotypes be idiots so the plot can happen and gameplay that's honestly really, really easy, I just sorta lost interest and stopped playing around chapter 6-7 since I wasn't really enjoying it in anyway, I can't care for the story because the main character, Chrom, is an unbelieveble idiot who would probably should have ended up dead before the game started and I don't enjoy the gameplay because it's kinda easy to the point of tedium. Me and a friend (who borrowed Awakening and one of the Fate's games off a friend, dunno which one he played first, I just know he played both and enjoyed neither.) kinda got put off FE from that, I only really got into FE because I found out Awakening was actually contested (having only heard praise for the game beforehand so I assumed every other FE game was like it.) afterwards and decided to try out FE7 on an whim. (And my friend who got put off the series is acutally interested in trying out FE7 after I told him about it.) So I don't really think it's that good a game for newbies considering how it put me and a buddy off the series for a good while because of many things that are actually exclusive to it and not in FE7 and Echoes at least.

Just Artwork. I actually like Mark for how minor they are (My first FE experience being Awakening probably had something to do with that since I kinda had problems with Robin from the start.), while I would theoritically like Mark to be maybe made a Dancer-style character (Buffs other units but is either unable or really terrible at fighting.), considering how IS have been treating Lyn lately/avatars in general, if they gave Mark an bigger role he'd turn into an overpowered unit who can romance almost everyone and they'd heavily push Mark X Lyn to the point of being obnoxious. So yeah just Artwork because I do not trust IS to not turn him into the kind of overpowered player-pandering Avatar that I hate with a passion if they start adding to him in any other way.

I actually like Echoes' Map Design so far? I've beaten most of the game, I've just recruited Zeke as Alm and got past the Sage's Hamlet as Celica but I actually liked some of the more infamous maps I've heard people not like, such as Nuibaba's stage and I know that stage isn't well-liked but I actually sorta liked how the devs did stuff like blocking Nuibaba off from Cav rushes via mountain tiles for difficulty instead of say, Enemy reinforcements. It feels alot more fair when it's accounting for stuff like Swamp tiles or the enemy being in an awkward spot and such rather than enemies spawning out of nowhere and rushing my weak units.

Not yet but just becasue I turtle like mad generally waiting for them to come to me, haven't finished the game yet so maybe there is a god awful map that spams you with them. Someone did argue their better than Ambush spawns, which I do agree with, since at least here I know that I'm going to take some cheap damage and just work on having everyone together and healed up to dog-pile the witch once she appears. I still don't like them but at least when I see a witch on the map I can just have everyone bunch up and heal each other then wait. (As opposed to someone getting one-shot because a dude popped out of a fort in Chapter 5 of Awakening since I had no way of predicting that, which was so awful it made me drop the series for a while since that was my first time.) I'd still prefer Ambush spawns that don't move on the same turn (Can we please get an option for Hard mode without annoying move on spawn Ambush spawns already?) but at least with a witch I can kinda go "Okay there's a witch, everyone get in the bunched up formation with low resistance units in the middle."

Yeah it's kind bad in Echoes. I only bought the Cipher characters (Which I'm saving for a second playthrough) and the Rise of the Deliverence DLC because "Overclasses" (which to me screams "Here's OP classes for real world money!") and Grinding maps, in a game where arguably part of it's problem is too much grinding (Since constantly respawning enemies on the overworld, plus you can just go into a dungeon if you ever need to grind.) is kinda scummy so I only bought the ones that seemed to actually add any content that wasn't just breaking the game's balance over it's knee. While I prefer Echoes to my admittingly little experience with 3H's Monestary (Since in Echoes i just click on menus to quickly go through stuff in towns instead of having to physically move through the monestary where Byleth has to constantly stop running for a second to let the game load constantly.), Enemies respawn way too quickly on the overworld, Want Alm to double back and make your weapons better with Forging/promote units? Maybe you even realised you forgot to finish a side quest well ten, better get ready to kill the same enemies on the map you already captured with Celica at least twice before he actually gets back to continuing the main plot. I've killed way too many knights in repeated Forest battles, they really should have lowered the spawn rate on the counterattacks, it's not like they're needed for grinding since Dungeons exist. So they massively pad out the game's runtime since you have to do battles that you will do almost exactly the same way you did it the last 300 times you did it since it's usually the exact same enemies too, You pretty much just start playing the battles on auto-pilot, having everyone move and perform almost exactly the same attacks each time.

Yeah I love Echoes but seriously screw witches, they're seemingly inconsistent with their teleports (Delthea teleports very far away from you while other witches seem to close the distance a bit more and of course Delthea can't actually teleport once you recruit her because that makes sense.) and there's no real way to predict when/where they teleport so all you can do is really just hunker down and wait for them to come to you while ensuring everyone's healed up til' their all dead in my experience. If they at least couldn't move right after teleporting they'd be less unfair.

It's fine if you like but for me the Zaniness kinda tips it over. (I'd actually admittingly find it a bit annoying even without Perma-death as I really don't enjoy the kind of comedy Awakening tries to go for, kinda at all but I feel adding any sort of permanent death system to a game needs to be accounted for in some capacity, admittingly I also wouldn't enjoy Awakening's kinda of Zaniness at all even without perma-death but having a serious permanent death system and Awakening's Zaniness (and The fact so many characters have plot-armor) makes me wonder if Perma-death was even intended for Awakening since as I said before, at least one support falls apart if you actually start losing people (With Virion and Robin.) and basically most of the female cast at least have it. The sheer amount of plot-armor/and at least some dialogue and events that were clearly written almost for a "No one dies at all" run makes me start to doubt classic was ever intended for that game. (I know it didn't originate casual.)