Sengu

I feel you. Axe wielders are terrible in this game.

I played both of the runs at Normal! I already had tons of problems on the first run so I didn't even consider doing it at Hard. Gonzalez being 11 in B route must be the reason. I didn't remember him being at level 5 in A route, so it must mean he was weaker and I could use him less in the latter. While I do agree that the bolting sages can be infuriating at times, I found map 20 to be a breeze after a couple torches, luring the axe wielders in the bottleneck and send the mages (namely Niime, promoted Lugh, promoted Raigh and promoted Lilina) in the vanguard and let them take (or dodge) the boltings, thanks to their high resistance. Although it doesn't have anything to do with the routes, I found Chapter 16x to be the worse in regards of boltings and casters. I can see why people find that map to be well-paced. When I have to do everything mechanically just to recruit everyone and visit the villages it doesn't work for me. It also doesn't really help that I'm the kind of guy that HAS to recruit everyone and gather all the items ^^" Chapter 11B while being less inspired in regarding of design it was way easier to get everything done without too much of a hassle.

Actually I'm more of a Echidna >>> Bartre in this case. Anyway, what I meant about the enemy choice unit and placement is: in the fog map I just hated the mass of flying pegasus knights in the A route. They are weak, true, but they seem to storm you endlessly. The nomads on the other hand are more powerful but they can always bottlenecked in many ways and dealt with in many ways. Pegasus knights are (almost) always about having archers or other flying units that can reach them. On the other hand you got ballistae literally EVERYWHERE so using flying units in those chapters is not a viable options (or, at least, can get pretty obnoxious). Also, chapter 19B and 20B were much more interesting in my opinion because of the map design and enemy choice, due to the forementioned reasons I find nomad and nomad troopers really engaging and fair to battle with. Didn't really like 18B though, too straigthforward I think. Chapter 11A also was my least favorite in the entire game: trying to recruit everyone in that map while stopping the bandits felt like a chore. I found 11B to be way easier to do. Also for some reason my Gonzalez in B route was stronger, but I'm not sure if it was just my impression. As stated in previous topics I'm relatively new to the Fire Emblem internet community so I didn't really know that the B route is generally disliked. That's interesting.

I recently played twice through The Binding Blade and I found the B route (both Elphin and Sacae) much more enjoyable than the A route I did on my first playthrough. Maps and storyline are not that different but I found them to be a bit less bullshit in B route than A route (aka enemy placement and enemy unit choice). I have to say I was not particularly intrigued by this game's storyline, but the B route was also a little more interesting (although just slightly, I mean... it only adds minor nuances to it). What do you people think? What are your favourite routes in this game and why? Also: Elphin >>>>> Lalum and Dayan >>>>> Juno IMO

Alright, now I'm curious, what map?

Thanks, I'll have a look at the series but your explanation has already cleared most of my doubts!

As the title says. I'm new to the FE community on the internet and I stumbled upon this word many times, but didn't really understand what it means in the context of the games. Can someone enlighten me and maybe get a little more specific? (yeah, I suppose this question is really naive and dumb but hey, what can you do)

I guess it depends on how you play it. Personally I like to recruit every character during my first run, as well as letting no one die. This is my way to have fun with Fire Emblem. Now the problem with this is that I found Binding Blade to really exagerate with the reinforcements and has a weird balance with the rolls of the hits, missing even with 90 or above. All of this results in a lot of trial and error, especially if we talk about the reinforcements issues since you don't know where will they be coming from. I can think of Chapter 21 which was a real nightmare for me and I had to abuse the suspend\resume feature. The impression I got from this game is that was meant to be played in some kind of "rush mode", at least if you want to recruit everyone or get past Chapter 22.

Thanks, this is interesting. I was looking for a way to bypass the region lock but didn't stumble upon this AR Freeloader you speak of. I will look into it, although when I was living in Japan my passion for Fire Emblem didn't reignite, so I didn't acquire any japanese copies of the forementioned titles. Maybe I can get them from some japanese website if the shipping costs are "ok". Thanks, do you happen to know some alternatives to ebay?

I know japanese, so the language is not a problem for me. The real problem is the console since european ones are region locked so I can't get japanese games to work on my GameCube and Wii. Yeah, I'm italian as well and I noticed this kind of trend. I hate that.

I live in Europe and I really don't understand why these games are so expensive. Do any of you people know how to get Path of Radiance and/or Radiant Dawn at least at a tolerable (ie: 20-30€/$) price? I mostly searched on ebay but the prices are outrageous. Any other online shop that I might not know of?

From what I gather you can only recruit Echidna if you visit the left village on chapter 9 or no village at all. So...

I'm relatively new to the Fire Emblem community so I'm not sure about what the unpopular opinions are. Also I only played FE6 and 8, and a bit of the original FE for now so... Judging from the few things I've read around the internet I'd say mine are: Phantom Ship in FE8 is a fun and engaging map The Sacred Stones > The Binding Blade I like the Tower of Valni (although many of its levels are rip-offs from FE6) Wolt > any other archer in FE6 The way FE6 handles how to get past Chapter 22 it's really obnoxious I guess I'll be able to expand a little bit on these opinions once I played through FE7 as well.

If we're talking about pre-promotes, then in my experience the best units to invest in are Rutger, Lilina and Deke. As far as the game goes, you will get a lot of promoted units but I can think of a couple of pre-promoted even in the furthest chapters (like Hugh and Zeiss) that are "ok". I recently played the game for the first time and I found Rutger to be completely broken. He doesn't have a great amount of defence, but he can basically dodge his way out the whole game and confront every boss without breaking a sweat. As for Lilina if you wait to promote her at 20, she becomes an undestroyable magic tank (I'm not a fan of promoting so late, but I hear many people are). She gets incredibly high magic and of course high resistance. Deke doesn't shine in any particular way but I found him to have over all good defence and tons of HP. He is also pretty accurate if you stick to swords (didn't personally bother to train him with axes, I didn't find them to be so useful in this game).

Hi all! I can't say I'm a huge connoisseur of Fire Emblem as a series, but since I was around 10 I have played The Sacred Stones COUNTLESS times and it's a very nostalgic game for me. Recently I had my hands on some older iterations such as The Binding Blade (which I just finished, bad ending duh) and The Blazing Sword (which I plan to start soon). As for my background, I'm 27 and I was born and raised in Italy but my father is from the UK. I have also lived in Japan for some time. While I was there my passion for the series didn't reignite so I lost the chance to get my hands on some Fire Emblem games, since old games in Japan are pretty cheap and the language is not a problem for me. Cheers.