Zapp Branniglenn

Lotta people saying Binding Blade is a more player phase focused game. Not about to argue the point, as I believe with some games it involves the player's playstyle and unit selection just as much as what's in the game itself. FE6, classic example. With that game, there's a large, open ended roster of units with varying degrees of strength (yes, very diplomatic way of saying "unbalanced game" wouldn't you agree). For me, FE6 is player phase focused only in the chapters before I promote Rutger. And then later in the game when I'm throwing indestructible units like Miledy, Percival, at mobs of enemies. Planting a berserker on the mountain to the side to safely lure all the wyverns/nomads in a different direction from the pack. FE6 enemies are spongier than the rest of GBA era, that's true. But the best argument for player phase game is showing off everything you can get done with Rescue/Mini Canto - also in FE7. I definitely thought of it, but only found it worth mention with Phina. Every other dancer I chose to rank was around for 40-60% of the playtime, so splitting hairs didn't feel worthy of the extra word count. Sylvia/Lene is closer to Phina's availability, but Sylvia's initial chapter 2 performance isn't exactly making her case when she's trudging through forests, dancing for exactly one unit, and soaking up village rewards instead of regrouping with the army (she needs the gold that bad). It's a miserable situation that muddies the point about availability. I'm on my knees looking for the answer I will try to keep casual mode in mind when we get to healers. Losing the little healer girl may very well be the catalyst that prompted players to reset and flip on casual. As for dancers, part of their perceived value is the fact you can only have One. Could it be that older, pre-Casual Mode fire emblem players have a warped perception of units like this? May be worth examining.

The lack of Kremlings was a big sticking point. That and the forced motion controls. I had to convince a lot of folks to give the game a chance back then. It's quality as a 2D platformer was certainly uncommon for the Wii era. It was Miyamoto that vetoed K Rool for that game. Make sure there are no crocodiles in there.

As long as you steal the Iote's shield from Narcian, Miledy will fear no Nomad. Short bows are wimpy but they will have crit rate on you. She's bulky enough where 0x3 is still 0 damage. Biggest problem with your team is nobody can cross rivers. Only the fliers, Echidna, and promoted Shin. Definitely field Echidna over another cav. Sending someone south from the starting position in chapter 18 really speeds things along, I guess that'll be Shin. And Echidna's con is 9? Eww. She can't ferry people across like Gonzales/Garret can. Chapter 20x will be a slog if everyone has to ride the long way around. Taking pot shots from the nomad troopers that can cross. I guess on that map make everyone in the upper right a horse, rescue Roy, and book it to the west or south before you get too much of the enemy's attention. Good advice! Percival is your cav #2. He's excellent. The second knights crest is after his recruitment, that's two thirds of the way through the game. You can raise a second cav, but neither of them is going to be as good as Percival - certainly not with his Hard Mode stats.

With the recent release of Sea of Stars, the impending release of Super Mario RPG, and the announcement of the TTYD remake, this is a good time for action command RPGs. I've been playing quite a few myself over the last few months and thought I'd focus my monthly update on Mario RPG-like games. Perhaps all that activity summoned the TTYD remake? I joke about these surprise announcements for Metroid and Pikmin in the past, but if any one person is to blame for the TTYD announcement, it's probably that blue muppet. On to the games Paper Mario TTYD 64 Ikenfell Paper Mario Color Splash Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope Season Pass I am working my way through some newer titles as well! But don't have much to report on this time. Just Armored Core 6. Maybe I'll save them as a sort of "GOTY Watch" roundup in November or December. In October, I refuse to write up on any game that's not spooky.

Let's talk about some S tier units. If the S stood for Step Up 2: The Streets This discussion may have a less broad focus than we’re used to, since there is always one dancer maximum at a time in fire emblem. So it’s more of head to head discussion between units in totally different games. I’ve actually been thinking of a format similar to that, if we were to redo these threads a few years from now. Instead of ranking games, rank the individual members of that class independent from each other. Like a cavaliers list would go #1 FE7 Marcus, #2 Seth, and just keep going down the list to Cav!Amelia, FE3Book2 Roshe, etc. But I also find that format struggles once we move on to more modern titles with free reclassing. If nobody has ever thought to make an armor knight Corrin, why bloat the list to pick on units like him? Anyway here's my ranking. Only of the applicable games I've played since 2017 Next week will be Pegasus / Falcoknights. And on that thread we'll run the poll again to see where to go from there

Ruh roh. Does the challenge demand recruiting every unit? Because how do you deal with the Maidens on the final map if you can't field their soul mates from earlier in the game? Who's going to talk down Nyna, Roshe? Or did they make it so that Kris can recruit all the wamen?

The Authority Personals are a fascinating idea. And thank you for having offensive tactics grant accuracy on top of damage. That's what it should have always been, but instead the only way to up your odds on a 50 charm opponent was to grind out Hit+20, which felt like a design oversight to begin with.

Yes the triangle attack will miss but who cares. It procs on enemy phase. And you can bait them into your triangle with careful placement of the lowest def sister. Best triangle attack in the series in my imo. Never has an Est been so easy (and lucrative) to raise

Is it really though? Grappler Dimitri is such better combat benchmarks, on top of the thief movement and higher AS/avoid. And when you need Atrocity-level damage against a monster boss, Fierce Iron Fist has you covered (nothing would stop him from using atrocity anyway). If we could modify his class on chapter 13, the Grappler -> War Master Dimitri meta would be so entrenched nobody would question it past the first year of the game. I couldn't see anybody electing for Paladin on that map because of the high concentration of forest tiles. I'm definitely thinking I underrated Three Houses cavs though. Particularly from the angle of Normal and Hard modes. In a setting where you can naturally double and ORKO enemies on your speed alone, the canto classes become immediately better in relation to the delete button classes (grappler, sniper, etc). Bow Knight is the same way. I would answer "There's room in S tier". FE9's canto classes are so much higher in performance than the Have-Nots. I suppose the argument for FE9 Cavs > Pegs is just...there's more of them. And your first two have higher availability than Marcia. Marcia and Jill are some of the best units, no question. But they're also two very high priority Bonus Exp dumps whenever I play Hard. Forget Oscar and Titania, their base stats don't even stand up to Kieran. I'm giving them at least five levels worth to get them on par with him. And the only reason I don't give them more is Mist is hungry, they're going to see so much combat by the end of the game I don't want them to cap level at 20/20 too fast I don't have a ranking ready for the pegasus knights list, but if I had to give a number 1 spot in the next three seconds, my answer is probably FE9. Incredible, consistent performance with no bad members of the class to drag down the ranking.

Incidentally the 2v2 team based mode in Super Mario Party was very interesting and I wouldn't mind them returning to that concept. Teaming up with a partner and sharing stars. Traditional, local multiplayer can get exhausting when one person is always finding themselves in the lead and getting targeted by the other players. The others will forge temporary alliances, but nobody wants to help the dude in the lead. Pre-determined alliances create a more fair cooperative dynamic. It would also be easier to hand a little brother / child the win every once in a while. Normally I got to throw a few minigames and make other subtle moves that help them out, but there's only so much you can do as one player.

Definitions are ultimately up to the person ranking, whether they include this or that class. FE4's horses aren't even called Cavaliers to begin with, so we have no choice but to interpret. I think a good criteria is "has a horse and at least one of: Sword/Lance/Axe access before promotion". I always exclude unique Lord classes, even though Sigurd's class is basically what you'd expect of a "Paladin". I know off the top of my head he is missing those Mag and Res boosts that Noish and Alec get when they promote. I fully agree that him alone would bump FE4 up to FE9 immediately. Master Knights and troubadours I would exclude because they're not cavalier-like before promotion. As well as mounted archers since those were covered in a previous thread for bow knights. Edit: Oops forgot to rank The Last Promise. Rom Hack discussion is also welcome!

Not sure if this is a hot take since so few have played all five games (and neither have I, having only watched playthroughs of Thracia), but I do genuinely think FE1 is Kaga's strongest level design. Or rather, strongest level design of the Kaga era FE games. Kaga was not dubbed Director of the series until FE2, so it's hard to speculate if he was doing as much as drawing the maps back then. I finished Gaiden for the first time last month. Your villager and shrine choices are solid. I do encourage sticking with Silque despite all the barriers keeping her from reaching Warp and her promotion. She's worth it. Whether or not you should raise Clair is...a tough one. The Falcoknights stats are outrageous in this version, so even the lack of monsters feels like a moot point when she's suddenly on par with Tier 3 units. She's a tough project to manage. Due to her generally losing any 1v1 with such low strength and defense, and you already want to prioritize kill exp for Silque. I was legit in the game's final chapter before I felt Clair was starting to pay back all that effort. Meanwhile, the Whitewings are good when they arrive and absurd once promoted, even Est. Overall I'd advise against raising Clair since experience is at such a premium in Alm route with no great grinding spots like Celica has (look out for Mummies, or entombed, whatever your translation calls them. Identical stats to Zombies, but bugged to grant max exp on death). Merc!Gray is great with investment. In this version of the game, Tier 2 and 3 swordies take no movement penalty from forests, and there's a lot of that in Alm route and Celica act 4. Plus FE2 is always feeding you more swords than you have units to use. Never feel ashamed for using this class. You've also spotted another thing that makes FE2 unique. Archer range isn't tied to what tier of archer class you are. Simply carrying a bow, even the lowly Steel Bow, gets you from 1-3 to 1-5 range as early as chapter 1. Very cool, just wish they could hit a damn thing consistently.

The phrase Hold Your Horses is a bannable offense here. Final Warning. Earlier in the year we were going through classic Fire Emblem classes to determine how well they perform game to game. Just a fun discussion to have in the wake of a brand new Fire Emblem game having just released. You can come at this question any way you like, use any justifications you like. Include any related class that you feel is appropriate (in this case, Great Knights) The goal is to share some perspectives and maybe broaden our understandings of the games in the process. I contacted @Whisky and he gives his blessing to continue those threads so that we can wrap up some of the juicier topics before putting the discussion to bed until, I dunno, the next Fire Emblem game releases? Here are links to previous discussions: Myrmidons / Swordmasters Mercenaries / Heroes Thieves / Assassins Fighter / Warrior Brigand / Pirate / Berserkers Archers / Snipers Nomads / Bow Knights Armor Knights / Generals And here are my own personal rankings. Of games that I've played since 2017. And I try to come at it from a perspective aggregating all skill levels, from the lowest to the highest. If a class carries a novice / uninformed player, then that's as significant to me as a class that is pushing an LTC to its absolute limit.

Let me get out in front of all the "Overrated" hot takes I see coming in the future for the remakes of Mario RPG and especially Thousand Year Door. Look, Nintendo discourse is highly nostalgia-laden. Why? Because these games are made for Children, first. It's not hard to put together why people have strong reactions for what they played at an impressionable age. Let them have their memories. There is no such thing as an unpopular, Nintendo-published game, so of course it's "Overrated", in simple terms. These two continue to illicit such an emotional reaction because they're the last of their kind. We didn't know at the time this was the last partnership between Square and Nintendo, or that TTYD would be the last Paper Mario game. When they came out in 1996 and 2004, the response of the day was basically "yeah it's fun, but kind of outdated. 8 out of 10. Your kids will love it". You could go in expecting a 10 out of 10 game or you can be reasonable and judge a game on its own, separate from the hype. What a remake will always fail to do is put you in the shoes of someone playing the game in the environment it came out. There's an auto runner called Bubsy: Paws on Fire. With one button it does Sonic better than the average Sonic game. If the Super Mario 64 developers had realized they had something on their hands with this brand new "collectathon" genre, that 3D Yoshi's Island would have been OoT levels of game changing. Instead they released Sunshine and killed all the momentum Rare wore themselves out building up. Now the modern Yoshi games can't step out of the shadow of that original Yoshi's Island. I can't even separate my memories of playing Wooly and Crafted World in my head because it's the same game.

Can't believe they made a Wario version of Peach and her name is Grape. Some things would sound so dumb on paper until it's presented unironically to the audience. I have to defend this creative decision to my dying breath now.

Why have you all HIDDEN this from me? It's so obvious that the dumb name was in service of the acronym. Man I spent all those years fixating on "Sharp FE" that I didn't think twice about Tokyo Mirage Sessions being anything more than word gibberish. Anyone that's ever said "I wish they gave us an ACTUAL SMT x Fire Emblem" has been thoroughly pranked. It's Not either game, it's the bizarro, mirror dimension version of both. But they really missed an opportunity with the Switch version. Just adding Encore? Where's the word that starts with F? You could have had FE backwards as well. Tokyo Mirage Sessions Encore Forever

You can always spot a vanillaware game. Coming to all consoles, but not PC? But they've been finally migrating stuff to Steam in the last year, it's a big disappointment if this one doesn't show. Edit: Actually they HAVENT been migrating stuff to Steam, I guess I dreamt those ports up. Peach game looks really fun. The TTYD trailer was a huge relief- the outlines are correct. If they had done white outlines I would have freaked. Actually just finished a paper mario game last week and am in the middle of the newly released TTYD 64 mod. I guess I willed this into existence like I did Metroid Dread and Pikmin 4. You're welcome. Probably not picking this up, except perhaps buying it on behalf of someone else who never played the original. It's a one of a kind game. I firmly believe that in most of our parallel dimensions, Thousand Year Door was just "The second Paper Mario game" instead of the last of its kind. The one that didn't do well critically or commercially but people are always rediscovering to praise the characters and story.

I can only offer advice regarding Xenoblade 1. If you ever decide to try again on the Switch version, try out Casual Mode. It removes the level scaling and allows you to beat the game with extremely minimal grinding compared to the original, "Classic" mode setting. I don't even think it makes the game any easier beyond this one change, and you can even flip it on mid-playthrough. However I admire your resolve to quit the game partway through. RPG discussion is held hostage by the "It gets good...20 hours in" crowd when in reality so many of them feel identical at Hour 50 as Hour 5. Our beloved Fire Emblem even. I finished Xenoblades 2 and 3 and all I could think about was how I wasn't getting those hours back. There's good things in those games if you go in with an open mind. But this can be said of 99% of games out there. Take it from someone who's played a thousand of them. Choosing to put down a game, for any reason, takes a level of self-respect that I think is underrated in our gaming culture.

It's unrequited love, plain and simple. It sucks for Elincia, but Ike never shown any romantic affection for her. They're lifelong pals, but I feel like by the events of Radiant Dawn Elincia had grown out of it anyway. I can't speak to why precisely Ike leaves. Sure you could point out there's no more work for a merc when the land is at peace. But him leaving the company and his only surviving family behind implies to me that he abandons mercenary work in search of something loftier. And if we never hear from him again, I'm guessing he found it. Door's still open for IS to make a new fire emblem game in a unique universe only for an older, grizzlier Ike to show up and steal the show. Fire Emblem: Final Radiance.

Have to second the Christmas Cav advice. You can use both (or even take a chance on Noah), but recognize that even with insane level ups they'll never be a Hard Mode Percival. And Cav #2 might cap at level 20 waiting for the second knights crest (it's two thirds of the way into the game, AFTER Percival). Early game isn't giving you a lot of good long term prospect units, so spreading the kill exp between the two cavs, Roy, Shanna, Dieck, Lugh, and Rutger is not going to give you any problems. Benching the lesser performing cav is just standard practice. Saul is also pretty unnecessary, just substitute Clarine for him on the desert map. If I have to make a case for any replacement, Gonzales, 100%. Yeah he's got hit issues, but he gets +10% hit and +30 crit on promotion. If you really don't want the headache of raising Gonzales to level 10, Garret is pretty underrated. Send Base level Garret alone to the right on Chapter 21 with a hand axe and he will solo the first squads of wyverns by just standing on a peak. This makes the map a lot easier since you won't have to split up the rest of your army. He has similarly good performance on chapter 23 - even if he's hit by a berserk or sleep staff, he's fine if he's already on the peak.

Overall I'm grateful for the invention of Character Recommendation guides over tier lists. It's a more helpful resource for the Blind / Casual player. These characters you should have no reservations about using (Dancers, Healers, a great 'Jagen', Lords who can't be undeployed). These characters are great out of the gate and will continue to be as you stick with them. These characters can potentially be great, but at high investment costs (experience, resource favoritism, etc). And these characters are probably best ignored unless you feel you have a handle on the game and want a bit more spice in your playthrough.

I always wanted Wyvern Rider to be recontextualized into a Beast Master / Ranger class line, with Wyvern Rider as one of the final branch options that offers flying movement. It would be distinct from other mounted units in that they don't use weapons. Functionally dealing unarmed / "brawling" damage as the beast claws, bites, and pounces on enemies. If you want to mechanically call back to Laguz units you can give them stamina meters too. But yeah, a lot of it comes down to "What animals are people okay with watching have a sword jammed into their face?". Why are we okay with watching horses get murdered? Probably because IS smartly doesn't put a pained Horse Neigh sound whenever they take damage. It helps imply that the Rider is taking all the damage while the horse is just taking a little nappy. ...Hm. Maybe shape shifters turning into animals are the way to go after all. No animal abuse, and we still get to see a unique monster tearing enemies apart in battle. I'll settle for manaketes, IS, just bring 'em back

I'm always in favor of clarifying what a community means with this or that term. I don't really have any strong opinions about Efficiency Play. I just think LTCs = skillful play is a very antiquated notion. Anybody can sit down and choreograph the perfect run of a map after 20+ resets. Rig a 2% crit on the boss to seize a turn earlier. That's not skill, that's mathematical acknowledgement that you can brute force the RNG for the best result if you wanted. In my mind, good players are willing to accept the consequences of risky play and continue the run without resets.

You've only played one game with Canto in it? It's Judgral time. FE4 all day.

Jamil can earthquake in Gaiden? I never saw it. Not sure I saw Duma do it either, he was just non threateningly summoning Biggles until I got to him. If he did earthquake, I had two fortify users with global range so it wouldn't have been a problem. Anyway I would say SoV did a good job overall if the biggest issue is failing to throw in a line about Jamil having been the cause of that earthquake separating Alm and Celica. If we can make the connection, whose to say the developers didn't also? They do add a duma cult battle at that point of the game, so maybe Jamil chose only to do the earthquake after learning that the assassination attempt failed. If his orders are to stop her from garrisoning with Sofia, then his mission is a success. Fernand and Berkut are inspiring additions to the game. There's a map with three random paladins in Act 3? Let's use that. Maria and Hestia share a recolored portrait with Sonya? Let's use that. Slayde discovers Princess Anthiese still lives in the prologue? Great. Finally a justification for why Mycen had to move her to an even more discreet location when Ram was evidently a safe location all along for Alm. What exactly do we wish would be done with one-off boss characters? I'm not convinced any existing idea from old Fire Emblem is that compelling. Certainly not "Give Ike a talk conversation with every boss". Him blurting out "Whoa! So you're a mage huh?" is still waiting to be made into a meme.