leshyver

So far there are 4 I greatly enjoyed and regularly feel like playing again : FE4, FE5, FE8 SS and FE9 PoR Three more I did enjoy but most likely will not play more of: SoV, 3H and Awakening I had some fun with FE1 but it's pretty limited, playing through Conquest at the moment so too early to say, and I have never been able to finish RD it just bores me way too much

1) Refocus the game around the battle maps rather than the menus/monastery/supports. This is the meat of the game, this is where I like my time to be spent and ideally the storytelling to happen. 2) Have a single difficulty setting with toggles for different game modifiers (casual vs classic vs ironman, 0% growth vs normal growth vs double xp, enemy stat growth multiplier, bonus items, number of rewinds per map etc). Some very good examples for this system are XCOM and Invisible Inc (go play invisible inc it's fantastic). Create a bespoke experience and let the players mess with it. A ranking system also achieves something similar but it's a bit more indirect. 3) Have few but meaningful and well constructed combat mechanics. I understand the appeal of the giant soup of mechanics in games like 3 houses (think about it: limited durability items, spells are learnable, combat arts, forging, squads that influence stats and actually need to be repaired after battle, gambits, supports, personal skills, class skills, learnable skills, a billion level bars...) but I prefer when there are fewer mechanics that are designed to work well together. I feel games like FE4 or SoV achieve a better balance.

Thanks for all these ideas 🙂 For those interested I finally got around to playing the chapter. I used Salem in the end. I still had my elite manual so I used it on him and grinded him up to promotion murdering the myrmidons that spawn after a while. This means I did not get any of the chests on the map but at least now I have Tina and her thief staff! Next time I do an iron man like this I need to remember to save up on keys...

I'll try this I guess, I still have the paragon/elite manual that should speed up the process quite a bit. Tina is more valuable that any of the chests in this chapter. I don't have anyone with A rank staves to warp her in the room though. Or maybe there is another way?

So I'm playing this Thracia iron man and have just reached chapter 12x (quite a ride up to here !). However I think I messed up and have no way to recruit Tina... I completely forgot I needed to plan for door keys for this map. I have no more door keys, and no more lockpicks (Lifis died with my last one in inventory). I just realized there is a locked door in front of the boss room: - I can thankfully warp Lara in to make her into a Dancer and recruit Pan and then warp Leif to seize. I can also sleep Trude to recruit him. - However once I've done this I have no way to get Safi in. No rewarp, no other A rank staff user, still no keys... Maybe I can rank up Salem fast enough to B so I can warp him in and rescue Safi? No idea how I'd have time for this though (and the opportunity really, I don't know how I'd even have a target to heal on this map...) Any other ideas? Otherwise I guess I'll just abandon poor Tina alone in the manor... No thief staff for me I guess!

For some reason I always get the most cursed Asbel in Thracia. On my first Iron Man he died before I could recruit him. On another run he only got one point of magic by level 13 and ended up with only one point of str less than magic. Since I also really dislike how polarizing he is in this game I often try to avoid using him.

I have a weird play order so I'll mention this first. FE10 when it came out, then 13, 3H, 4, 5, 9 and 10 again FE4 - Incredible story gameplay integration, great unit characterization (best in the series?), fun gameplay that is surprisingly streamlined. No outstanding flaw that contradicts the core design ideas behind this game : 9/10 FE5- A game of extremes. Amazing atmosphere, some incredible maps, lots of mechanics to play with, BUT dreadful first time experience, underdeveloped characters (looking at you Asbel), too much variance for my taste, a handful of really bad chapters : 7/10 (6 if you just want a consistent, single playthrough, 8 if you really like investing time/thought into a game) FE9 - The most consistent and honest FE experience. Everything is good, but sadly having played it for the first time in 2020 nothing feels outstanding in retrospect : 7/10 FE10 - Beautiful presentation and some interesting mechanics but it just always bores me. I can't get myself to play it. First time experience is also really bad because it's impossible to know what's worth investing in. I disagree the map design is particularly good compared to other things I've seen in the series - 5/10 FE13 - I have to give it credit for being the first game to really get me into the series. Looking back, it's an outstanding role play experience but a bad TRPG - 7/10 (a lot less if you want a TRPG, more if you like roleplay and you like to plan your characters ahead) FE3H - A game of contradictions. Designed to be replayed but full of tedious stuff you never want to do it more than once. Marketed on its characters but they are too customizable to feel different enough. Still a massive amount of fun on a first play through and a good entry point in the series. A lot of fun role play and planing opportunities too : 7/10 Conclusion: too many 7/10. I feel a lot of these games do a couple of things really well and a couple really poorly.

First attempt at a Thracia ironman today. I reach 4x with no casualty and a movement level up on Leif. This is fun! Aaaaand Asbel just got killed before I could reach him... I guess I'm now playing on hard mode! Another one of my favorite ironman stories: chapter 2 in Genealogy. Trying to bait out Erinys with Noish to recruit her with Lewyn. Seemed way safer to bait her with him since wind would have probably murdered her (I messed up my positioning and I had to risk a round of combat otherwise my home castle could would have gotten seized). Except I forgot Noish had critical, and of course it activated and poor Erinys got murdered. The best part is that I was planning to pair Noish and Erinys to change it up from my usual pairings and to get Crit to Fee. I guess Noish was not very happy with this... Next chapter, both Tailtiu and Brigid got killed before I could reach them thanks to really bad RNG. Thankfully I was able to seize before they reached poor Claude which allowed me to resurrect them both at the start of the next chapter.