Zapp Branniglenn

Hey um, can I get a steam link to this supposed Mega Man Legends-like game? Cause I'm playing the new Armored Core and I made basically the Gustaff with a Servbot as my emblem. Yes of course I've posted the trailer for Arzette in one or two discords. I think it may be the most compelling announcement of that day. Certainly better than the stupid Gex trailer everyone keeps sharing with me. I am NOT playing any more Gex. It's time to move on.

Listen the version of him we know is obviously retired. But he's not ready to give himself up at the graveyard of dragons. He'll move the earth to protect that little girl

Ah I find myself using characters like that often. I think what I like best about Shinon is that the casual Laguz racism proves to us what the narrative is saying about Tellius. If our army were 100% constructed of good boys and girls who have never had an insensitive thought or predisposition in their life, then the setting falls apart. In this fantasy realm of pure hearted individuals, racism stands out like a sore thumb. Where does it come from? It's unthinkable to imagine. Shinon never says a word in his own defense, he knows he's quickly becoming an outsider in a world that's ready to move on from people like him. And, for what it's worth, he is fighting for the Laguz at the end of the day, so the snide remarks can't eat too hard at his conscience, right? Bad men can end up on the right side of history as surely as the reverse. What about Jill? Well what about Jill? A cute, mean Laguz girl yells at her and her world view gets shattered? The only believable part of the arc is that she turns back after having one conversation with her dad. So many people would choose family over ideals in her position. She wouldn't just be killing her dad, she's killing herself. What's waiting for a traitor like her? Tellius has no answer for us. I was really taken in with Lorenz too. We're presented with a setting that tells us (but never shows) a classism conflict between Crests and No Crests. And Lorenz just eats it up. When you have infinite self esteem and a world that tells you you're great from your lineage alone, it's a match made in heaven. Fodlan tries to convince us that it's on the verge of a Reformation-scale event that will finally achieve equality for all. 99.9% of people you speak with in the Monastery are frustratingly on board with abolishing Crest-based holdings. There's no conflict here. The Reformation has already happened by the time the game starts. Everybody arrived at the right side of history before Judgement day. But then you've got Lorenz. He's the only one sipping the kool-aid, unknowingly holding the seams of this universe together. Whichever un-credited writer was in charge of Lorenz uniquely understood the assignment. And in the War Phase he comes around only because he's not a monster at the end of the day. Show him a world that rewards men of merit, and he's not afraid. His Noble Self Esteem keeps him from panicking as the walls come down around him.

So many interesting games have come out in the last month, both on the AAA side, indie side, and that weird space inbetween. August was also the month of F3 and that loaded up my backlog considerations as well. Never enough time. Still wrapping up some non-gaming projects before I can dive in. Fire Emblem Gaiden FTL: Faster Than Light Super Mario 64: Last Impact

It's almost a September Direct. Well, it'll be one hour to September in Japan once it starts. What is with the funky timing of Nintendo Directs the past few years anyway? It's an atrocious time for Japan, and in my wing of the US it's starting before morning coffee. Mario Wonder huh? Funny what a name change and art style tweak can do for the hype surrounding a New Super Mario Bros game. Hey, it's got playable yellow and/or blue toad and an animal themed powerup, those are the check boxes for NSMB. I didn't make the rules.

Here I am thinking I get Fire Emblem and *Kaga hits me with the What is a Unit question *Sorry, Nasako. Kaga's gotta stay out of the credits for legal reasons.

oh my. That was not one of the PSP games. Ascension released exclusively for the PS3 in 2013 as the final game before the reboot. It's also the series' only attempt at online multiplayer. Will the reboot ever be man enough to put a team deathmatch mode back into the game?

If I played FE1 again I would feed all speed and skill stat boosters to Bantu. He's the best physical wall in the game at base, and he has no weapon durability to worry about. If you can mentally handle the idea of using a unit that gains no stats on level up, he rocks. I recommend trying him out early in FE3 as well to understand the unique way that dragons handle in FE3. They never treated them like Xane ever again. If I ever play Book 2 again, he's definitely on my list there as well. Found out recently that the Iote's Shield protects against all effective damage, so he should chunk the Ice Dragons down for others to mop up I hope this doesn't come off as patronizing, but I would seriously recommend anyone use a guide for Book 2. I would argue it's a contender for the hardest Kaga game, and a lot of it's bite was taken out of FE12. I did a blind iron man that ended at chapter 2 because it feels like every early chapter is shaking up the rules in a unique and deadly way. Especially if you're hot off a playthrough of Book 1. It's a fascinating game and is waiting to be rediscovered by FE fans the way Thracia was. Not necessarily a "good" game, but I feel like I see how they arrived at FE4's major shake ups by looking at what went right and wrong here.

Well I don't have any immediate suggestions beyond "Do it for the Game Boy instead of the Famicom". Sounds like the only reason why you think they'd make a third one on that system is because some of the later systems would have three. But it's not like that history had happened yet or that three is some magic number. The Famicom was outdated hardware by the time FE1 had come out. The games were not especially well received until they Mystery of the Emblem gave them a clean slate on modern hardware. Okay. hypothetical where I'm pitching a Fire Emblem game to Nintendo in 1992. Gaiden is out. Kaga and his team are already nearly a year into their Back to Basics Mystery project on Super Famicom, so we can just go hog wild on familiar hardware without impacting the timeline as we know it. I'm proposing we take a second team of rookie designers for another 8 bit fire emblem. 9 month development cycle. Nintendo loves my pitch, but insists it's for the Famicom instead of the game boy. What's my pitch? Mega Man it. We're holding a character design contest. Send us your drawings and we'll use the best ones as a basis for character portraits and names. A lot of people ask why Capcom still did Mega Man games on NES in the wake of Mega Man X, the reason is because the robot master design contest was a hugely popular draw. The games were easy to churn out for junior designers, and people were buying the games just to see if they won. Cha ching. Because we're stuck on Famicom, we can't do anything about the graphics. Battle scenes are still in a black void. Text limitations are also going to kill most of our story telling potential. But our characters were made up by fans, so the story would probably have been extremely trite anyway. The setting would be original, since we wouldn't want to step on the toes of the already-in-progress Archanea Sequel that expands the lore of that universe. I want every playable class that appeared in Gaiden, excluding villagers. And add back manaketes because you just know a third of our submissions are dragon girls. I think doing explorable dungeons and towns would be a big pitfall if FE2's execution is the best we can hope for. It's no Final Fantasy. Instead I would double down on reclassing. When units hit level 10, they can choose to either promote or reclass to a new classline. We're taking Demon Fighters and turning that into the game's main mechanical draw. I just don't want villagers since it would be an unnecessary step that would slow it all down. I also really like the two armies concept from FE2, so I would push for that. No idea what the fire emblem would be, only that it would be split in half by our two protagonists to keep it from the villains until they eventually unite for the final chapter.

Honestly I could see an alternate universe where Book 2 of Mystery of the Emblem was released on its own for the Famicom. That would be FE3, probably incorporating some of Gaiden's classes the way Gaiden reused a lot of FE1 sprites. And the only thing that would change about the series is FE4 would either have released a year earlier, or would release at the same time and just be an even more massive game with a third generation. I tell you what though, the idea of doing a third, fully original Famicom game would not have gone over well with Nintendo. Gaiden was already two years younger than the super famicom, and from what I understand FE1 and 2 were received pretty divisively - For Nintendo standards and for standards of rpgs at the time. The graphics were the biggest issue, and you can't solve that without moving on to a 16 bit system. Shining Force released on the very same week as Gaiden and it had fully illustrated battle scenes, while also adding explorable towns and NPCs to the Fire Emblem formula. Sega was totally eating Nintendo's lunch, they couldn't afford to do a third, embarrassing famicom game. If I worked at Nintendo, my suggestion in place of them doing Mystery of the Emblem would be a side game for the Game Boy system. Game Boy Fire Emblem has pretty low risk of getting its ass kicked by Shining Force Gaiden on the game gear. Fire Emblem on the Go would build up some more positive brand awareness while we chug along on Geneology's development.

1. Just the support with Rhea. If you're not doing Crimson Flower, getting C support unlocks another paralogue after the time support, so it's lucrative to do that much at least. All three ranks of the support are pre-timeskip only. And the only way to boost support points with Rhea is to spam gifts at her and invite her to tea. I believe these supports must also be manually selected from the Supports sub menu. The game won't stop you to say "Rhea wants to speak with you" like with other characters. Also, individual ranks are time gated. C support has to be reached before the end of chapter 9, or the opportunity is lost forever. B support has to be activated before the end of chapter 11, and A rank has to be achieved before the end of chapter 12. 2. There are Five equip able ability slots, which are separate from the 1-3 class skills that you can't modify. To unequip abilities, you go into inventory (a lot of new players miss this). If you're full up and earn a new one in the middle of battle, the game will not ask if you want to swap it out for something. So if you know you're about to get something really useful in the next battle, leave a fresh slot open by unequipping something you want less. 3. A student's recruitment requirements go down as Byleth's support level with them increases. Lysithea cares about Byleth's magic stat and Faith rank. D Faith and 9 magic is sufficient if you can get her to B support. 4. What about Cyril? If you want to use him, the Best time to recruit him is chapter 5 or 6. You don't want to wait too late since his level scaling is way worse than other characters. You want him to pick up some stats for free by class changing (particularly from Armor knight which he only needs a little instruction in Armor to certify as). The appeal of Cyril is that his skill proficiencies and combat arts are top of the line good. Point Blank Volley on a Wyvern or a bow knight is generally his best class, but on normal difficulty he'll work as anything that's not a mage. 5. Shields are like any accessory in that you can only equip one at a time. If the speed drop is going to hinder your next combat, you can unequip it when selecting Items in battle. The Trade command can also be used to manipulate items on someone that's already moved, but bear in mind that when you exit the Trade menu, that unit will auto equip the weapon and accessory that is highest in inventory order. But I wouldn't stress about these tips unless you were playing Maddening. 6. Relics will tell you what crests are the most compatible. But simply having a crest at all lets you use anything without repercussions. Having the correct crest will open up a new combat art with that weapon. Or if it's a relic accessory, it will provide some other bonus like health regen or a chance to reduce damage.

It also solves one of the weirder plot beats of the original. Why was this servant of the goddess mila randomly captured half a continent away from Mila's temple, rather than by any of the hundreds of brigands, pirates, and Duma cultists Celica has to cut through on the way to the temple? In Echoes canon, she comes from the same priory as Celica. So that's a bit shorter of a trip. The bonus scene with Jesse further adds context that she absolutely did run into trouble on her journey. Either her luck ran out just short of Ram Village, or Mila's premonition was so spot on that she knew Alm would make it to the thief hangout anyway and save her. Silque would probably say it's the latter case. Even if Mila's Turnwheel has less story-gameplay inconsistencies in Echoes, I still think its mere mention in the plot can only invite potential disaster. And even back in 2017 my review of the mechanic was "Great idea, put this in every Fire Emblem game, but NEVER mention it in the script". You can't take a plot seriously if the protagonist is a no-limits-specified time traveler. And look what they did! Twice! Does the warriors game have divine pulse? Make that three then. Manuela would make a poor case for young and healthy. She's an alcoholic, for one. And her late night liasons may have picked up some *ahem social diseases. As for age, we can only speculate on life expectancy in Fodlan, but the oldest person we know of is Gilbert at 55. And hanneman at 51 looks like a modern day 65. I'd bet Manuela's 34 is just over the hill. That's certainly the vibe she gives off. If Jeralt were zapped of his crest right now, the only way he'd die before Manuela is because of his violent line of work. The "Death Knight wasn't actually trying to kill Manuela" argument is tricky. It certainly flies in the face of the name "Death Knight", and I can't think of any potential justification for why he would merely knock out Manuela when she was a witness. They didn't seem primed to kidnap her either. The best answer to this scene is probably the Death Knight is just really bad at his job. When you use a +30 crit weapon, you expect to one shot. This time he didn't.

The inconsistencies continue when they explain away the dagger that killed Jeralt. Moleman tech that can't be healed. Despite Jeralt being stabbed inside of what is probably the best medical facility in Fodlan. The same place that Manuela makes a full recovery from a similar dagger a couple chapters earlier. And when you take damage from those Agarthan weapons in-game, you can use the Heal spell on victims no problem.

Have only caught a stream or two of the game. Looks interesting! It's a small thing, but I like that your roll for skill checks is onscreen. So many CRPGs have the rolls be totally invisible to the player, leading to a system of mechanics that runs more on vibes than understanding. And sure, a D&D purist would say "well I don't tell the players what the DC is. I just tell them pass or fail. Stop thinking of things in the context of a video game". I get that perspective, but even in D&D I do see what I roll. I know that a 15 is very good, so when that roll still manages to fail it gives me a greater impression of the challenge than if the DM rolled for me behind a barrier. Plus I just like rolling dice like anyone else. I've been nitpicking for years these games ought to have more of the dice rolls visible, especially if it's adapting literal D&D. Hope to play the game myself later in the year. August is fangame/rom hack appreciation month, so my attention has been well diverted. And oof, what if Armored Core and Starfield are amazing too. This may become an expensive pileup of longform video games. Is it really the beeeeest isometric rpg? I kind of hope the internet rallies back around to Disco Elysium. That's a game I'd rather root for. you know it's funny, I played some of the CRPGs and the tabletop game when I was young. But we never played with official modules and settings in DnD. It would be at least a decade later before I noticed that Baldurs Gate, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, and Planescape were officially licensed settings.

Kudos to playing this game unspoiled. I want that for everybody. When I played, I knew about chapter 5 from an old retrospective video series, but when Quan gets ambushed I wanted to scream. There was nothing I could do

I'm content to leave these questions up to the developers, I'm just here to play the games. No one working on Fire Emblem now has been around since the beginning. And that reinvention-by necessity is its own strength. A friend asked me the other day for ideas on a fire emblem themed logo he could draw for his stream. It was then that I noticed Fire Emblem lacks visual iconography. There's no equivalent to Mario's Mushroom, Zelda's Triforce, Metroid's Metroid, or Final Fantasy's Moogle. When asked to picture "Fire Emblem", the image in my head is one guy on the left, one guy on the right, and numbers for Dam, Hit, Crit. There's no central protagonist, central villain, or shared universe. I fear the day that I play Engage and they try to tell me "no actually it is all one world. THIS world. Here's where the Battle of Belhalla occurred last year. Here's the site of Greil's grave. Over there is where Chrom walked in on Robin bathing"

My last playthrough of Path of Radiance was in 2020, but my last playthrough of Radiant Dawn was over a decade ago. I know for sure my preference back then was Radiant Dawn and I can't imagine it being different today. I still use "Best Fire Emblem since Radiant Dawn" as my top barometer for quality. I liked the new characters, I liked the more mature tone from the get go more than "Boyd, you're such a loser" "Shut your trap!". And I think Radiant Dawn's a contender for best battle animations in the series - but ultimately loses to Echoes. Anybody else watch these back in the day? Plus I think the gameplay is just really solid with a lot of memorable maps. The multiple army perspectives got us asking for them to do that or Route Splits again for every new game in the series - until Fates tainted the ideas forever by making it DLC.

Everybody's gangster until they see my goomba deck. They just keep comin'. Should have a mechanic where you have to roll to see if your guy bounces off them into a bottomless pit

Gotcha. Guess I have nothing to worry about. I think Alm was already tainted with a level up. When I revisited shrines I just hit auto battle and then throttle the game at 5x speed. I'll keep the support bonus between Alm and Celica in mind for the finale though. That sounds useful.

So I just got Celica's promotion and noticed that her HP stayed at 24 instead of raising it to 36. That's the suggested base HP that every FE2 resource claims the Princess class has. So, okay, not surprising to discover false info on an old, underplayed game. But then I started to get worried. What if the info was correct and the story based promotions just fail to raise that characters' stats to the class bases? I'm asking because of Alm. I haven't been raising him, and you need him to kill the final boss. People who played Echoes a lot know that Alm has to get an unrealistic amount of level ups to surpass the Hero's base stats, so it would be a waste to feed him kills. Has anyone who played FE2 know if that exploit works for him in the original? I haven't touched his Act 3 campaign at all, so if it turns out he gains nothing from promoting, then I guess I'd better start feeding him exp while it's still possible. I'm playing an unpatched rom, so I know it's not a bug introduced by a patch.

Oh buddy I've been flaunting that same video link for six years. I'm not sure I really cared about the narrative potential of permadeath before Echoes. The spark was me getting Est killed and hearing her call out to her sisters. Hearing, not reading like we did in previous, un-voice acted games. And the thing is modern Fire Emblem already has massive writing staffs. They'd have to be to turn in a script as lengthy as Three Houses. It's just a shame none of them went credited. Not a single writer/editor aside from the names under Localization (those are, understandably, writers) and the three names under "Scenario". Those are the Big Idea guys that might not have penned a single word in the finalized script. Let me take these underpaid, contracted, un-credited writers, and turn them onto subjects more interesting than Support Chain #12 for bad Gimmick Character, 'what does Hanneman say when you cook with him', and 'What does Raphael think of Crimson Flower chapter 14 when you talk to him in the Monastery'. Then I'll slip their names into the credits secretly and get fired from the japanese games industry.

Between-chapter narration does a lot of heavy lifting too. Setting a stage, giving us a vibe of the current conflict and its major players. But sure, I don't see a downside to a Malledus. And most people won't if she's a super hot babe whose unplayable yet plot important. Or maybe she and the Lord are a tag team, so a death doubly justifies the game over state. But man if it's me, I'm hiring on twice the writers and we're hashing out all the divergent scenes according to specific character deaths. Funeral scenes. Guilt trip-laden flashbacks. Cutting to the family that unit left behind. Discovering all of that would be way more interesting than reading the latest Bernadetta support where she flips out for a slightly unique reason. Then have some point-based unlock system for players to see all of that in the Event Recap instead of actually playing the game so many times for each permutation. No self-respecting writer would look at permadeath as a barrier to great storytelling. It's a distinct opportunity. An artistic license power trip.

Despite setting aside time for them, I had to work to fit in three July releases. And I haven't even gotten to the Mother Encore demo yet! Banjo Kazooie The Jiggies of Time Gravity Circuit Punch Club 2: Fast Forward Rayman Origins & New Super Mario Bros Wii Pikmin 4 No Fire Emblem this month? Yeah, FE12 is what killed the consecutive streak. I was not having a fun time. I'm still interested in Fire Emblem though and hope to play more soon.

I understand the Binding Blade has had a bit of a poor reputation over the years. We make fun of Roy's combat ability. Many call it the "worst of GBA era" which is like saying Ringo is "The Worst of the Beatles". Some Kaga purists might even lament the loss of mechanical depth coming off of FE4/5. And with it being one of the seven Japan Only games, the only folks that have given it a chance are the ones with the knowhow and ten minutes to spare to download and patch a ROM. Instead, most modern fire emblem players will tell you they're content to wait for the official remake. Just like FE4. That sucks, for both games. Let's stop talking about this fantasy, unannounced remake and instead talk about what we remember liking most about FE6. It's a cute approach for a Fire Emblem Reboot. Look, the franchise just lost its dad. Got booted from home consoles. FE6 needed to be a fresh start in a fresh world. But the attempts at shouting out FE1 are fun to discover for yourself. Most early game units have direct Archanean counterparts in terms of classes, appearance, and stats. They brought back dragons and a toddler manakete girl. Every map is a seize map. You've got the whitewings. You've got a True Ending if you picked up all the macguffin weapons. There's a shop selling infinite stat boosters at the end - not even the Shadow Dragon DS remake got that part right. And look at the first chapter. It's just Talys Island flipped clockwise 90 degrees. Thank god they don't force Roy to visit villages too. Kid's shoes are worn enough as it is. That timeless GBA FE aesthetic. Does this need an intro? I'm not sure I would have become a fan of this series in the mid 2000s if not for FE7's battle animations, and they were born here. The GBA's graphical capabilities are debatably on par with a Super Nintendo and yet I can't imagine a SNES game having such fluid animation. FE3/4/5 have their moments, sure, but FE6 rocks some serious artistic talent. And it's not just appreciation of the swordmaster's afterimages. You've got character portraits that gyrate and move around, adding a physicality to scenes for comedic effect. The chibi versions of character portraits on the map screen. Sachiko Wada is absolutely nailing the vibe of characters at first glance. It's good to iron man. Losing your freshly promoted Rutger to the first Berserker's 20 Hit / 30 Crit can devastate your chapter 9-12 experience, but other than that, nobody's particularly essential. The game is feeding a lot of great units as it goes on. Especially on Hard Mode where they have even more stats. FE7 is a little like this too, most of the worst additions to your army are in the first half. But everyone from Milady onward is an easy unit to recommend. So don't sweat the early deaths and keep pushing forward. Rescue is fun. I don't think I'll ever master what Rescue can do for me on every turn, but attempting to make use of it only makes the game more interesting. In Fire Emblems past, when a unit ends their turn, it's set in stone unless you use a warping staff. But Rescue allows for so many micromanagements - debatably more than Canto since non mounted units can do it in a pinch. Nobody's move is permanent. You can use Rescue to save lives, save turns, get units where they can most contribute. Just you wait, when they bring back Rescue in the next Fire Emblem it's all we'll talk about. What do YOU like about FE6? Bonus points if you can do it without dragging down other FE games. I almost succeeded in that regard.

Item management is rarely the make or break point of strategy. Just make sure all your units have something to fight with. Iron weapons are fine if you want to be frugal with your money. I don't often use vulneraries because my healers can gain exp out of that heal instead. A lot of specific tips are going to be game to game. Stuff like don't give Florina a steel lance because it will weigh her down by 9 points. But Sumia would be fine because weapon weight is not a thing in her game. Really a lot of what makes a good fire emblem player is just knowledge about that game, and taking the time to do some math on whether all your units will survive the upcoming enemy phase assuming every enemy in range A) targets them and B) hits them. My best general tip for a new player is don't take on more than your units can handle. Run the math regarding their Attack stat and your guys' defenses and HP. You can take your time through most maps because 99% of them have no time limit. Not every map has something that's prompting you to move quickly. Like a thief stealing treasure, or a bandit approaching a village. And if a map does have those things, identify those early and think hard about who you need to send to deal with it. Ideally someone with high movement and good enough at fighting that he won't need to retreat to heal (in fact this is the most common) scenario where I'll put a vulnerary in someone's inventory and use it, so that they can keep moving and stay topped off on health). Even if you fail one of these side objectives, it's not the end of the world. Just like how losing a unit is not the end of the world.