Hrothgar777

Engage (if only there was a thread dedicated to these kinds of posts in the Engage subforum). For now, crappy life circumstances limit how much I can play on it on a TV, and at this point the pleasure that I get from the game would probably be outweighed by the inconvenience of doing it on handheld (which is largely why I dropped Scarlet and haven't played it more than 3 or 4 times), especially with zero privacy unless I literally sat in my car, so I won't play a whole lot of it until life circumstances change. But some initial thoughts: -Being able to explore battle maps afterward is a nice touch, and it compensates for the smaller Somniel map vs. Garegg Mach. -Either I've just gotten worse as a gamer or the battles are harder than in 3H. It's set on easy and casual, but chapter 5 was brutal. And it looks like there aren't plentiful opportunities to level grind either. -For now I'm good, but I think sooner or later I'm going to get tired of running around the Somniel doing random crap for stat boosts. Which could be a problem if it turns out you need to keep doing that to remain competitive. Though, I didn't in 3H so maybe not. -Yes, I'm going to keep comparing this to Three Houses. From the start I knew this wouldn't fill the void finishing 3H left, but I got it solely because it was Nintendo's successor to that. -I hear outfits are interchangeable once purchased (haven't yet gotten to the point where I can buy one). Presumably this is gender-locked, but Clanne needs to be the exception to the rule. For me, that one thing would make this worth playing. -The mother suddenly dying held no emotional weight. A random episode of Star Trek I watched tonight did a better job pulling at my heartstrings with the death of a random Cardassian old guy than the death of Engage's big heroine did. -I get the feeling Engage is kind of modeled off of Fates. Even the "two retainers to the noble" thing is the same. -I hope the jukebox has a lot of offerings, and that you can play them during battle. And if so, I hope they become available quickly. -I was told money's limited here. That's also what I heard about Scarlet (is it a new thing with Nintendo?). Granted, I've always had way more than I need anyway because I don't spend that much (except in Three Hopes), so hopefully it shouldn't make a difference. -Alear is frigging weak. Byleth and Edelgard were wrecking balls more or less from the start, but this dude has to fusion dance engage to get anything done. -I didn't name him Alear. Had I done so, would the audio actually say "Alear" instead of the speaker going silent? -The weapons triangle is back and that's good, but I'm not sure if I like the "Break" mechanic. At this point it's being used against me much more often than I use it against the enemy. -I heard the baddies in this are kind of like Team Rocket. Hopefully that won't disrupt tension in the narrative by having them fail every time they try something.

This next idea is too unorthodox FE-wise, and would have too low a mainstream appeal, to be a Fire Emblem title. Let's say it's another game by Kaga. Call it "Water Insignia." Or whatever. Synopsis You are Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Lusitaine. Your father is old and he decides to abdicate so that you can succeed him. Your coronation takes place in a cathedral in the neighboring Bishopric of Rheims, which is neutral. Coincidentally, another young prince, Lothair of the neighboring Kingdom of Frisia, is also being crowned king there a few days later. Both you and him arrive in a palace where you stay during your time in Rheims. Due to a strange mixup, you end up wearing the clothes of your manservant and trusted friend, and you're wandering the palace so dressed when you stumble across Lothair, who hasn't met you yet and doesn't know what you look like. Thinking you're but a humble concierge of the palace, he invites you to go hunting with him since he's lonely. While there, he confides to you that he holds (and his father held) the Lusitainian royal family in contempt and plans to seize their kingdom for himself, taking advantage of the weakness of the new king. You stay silent. Shortly after you get back, you're crowned and then you immediately return home, intent to prepare yourself and your kingdom for the coming invasion... Gameplay This game would have an absolutely enormous map and things wouldn't reset between "chapters". It'd be one continuous battle on a piece of real estate that'd make the FE4 maps look small. It'd be a game made on a budget and the graphics wouldn't be much better than the SNES titles (with the exception of combat animations, which still wouldn't be 3D). Battle mechanics would be very similar to FE. Where this would differ is that the landscape somewhat realistically reflects feudalism instead of you controlling everything like the defense minister of a modern country. You are the crown. You directly control some fraction of the domain. The rest is nominally aligned to you. The enfeoffed nobles under you have their respective domains on the map, have different identities and belong to different families, and have their own backstories and personalities and motivations. Under the best conditions, such as close proximity, you command them. At the middle, you issue directives which are more or less obeyed by AI. Then, you have a domain which doesn't obey you but isn't opposed to you. Finally, there are domains directly in conflict against you, though you're their king. As mentioned, control diminishes with distance. You also start with a limited "bandwidth" in terms of issuing orders and receiving up-to-date information about local conditions. Less control, then, also correlates to greater "fog of war". What I've described so far is the macro-map. All macro-maps are but simplifications of micro-maps, which are zoomed in and enlarged. Unit actions within macro-maps encompass a certain time frame, such as a week, but in micro-maps, the same action is performed over several turns (days), which allows for discretion in terms of how exactly it's done. To see what happens on the micro-map hinges on player control. If, for example, the AI nobles are directed to travel a certain distance in the domain but come across an obstacle midway, and the player can't see it, the macro-action (of traveling to X destination) may fail to complete and the player might not know why. It is possible to breed units. However, they are limited to a domain's capacity to supply "provisions" to their warrior class. Provisions must be generated; transporting them from one domain to another, such as during military campaigns, can also be challenging. Most nobles have a bias toward staying at home, not only within their own domain but in their home castle. If they don't have a reason to stay out, then they'll tend to head back. Reasons to campaign include a domestic threat, an external threat, a provocation by another party, or (for a minority) a desire to advantage from violence wherever they smell an opportunity. There is an obvious diplomacy component; they are nominally loyal to you, but you haven't been king for very long as of the start. To build up their loyalty is one mission you'll have to undertake; another is to build up the infrastructure for receiving information, issuing orders, and exerting a large geographical reach of control. There are support conversations, but for obvious reasons two units must be in physical proximity on the map. When things get larger and more complicated, you'll be able to allocate responsibilities to ministers so that it's automated and you can focus on the details that matter to you. However, an insufficiently loyal or competent minister can prove your undoing. This is "Part 1" of the game. In a nutshell, the objective is: (1). to consolidate your control over your kingdom; (2). to implement stability and reform on a scale that'll allow for your overall economy to grow enough that you have surplus provisions for a lot of units embarked on campaigns; and (3). to ensure that your units are leveled up, re-classed, well-equipped, and so on. In theory, you could get through Part 1 by just surviving, but... In Part 2, the enemy king has consolidated control over his kingdom and its armies (and it takes him about as long), and now he's going to attack you. How well you fare is going to hinge on how well you prepared in Part 1. There were plenty of possible battles to fight in Part 1, but this part is mostly fighting.

A few things: 1. This is much too short for an individual chapter. Assume 3,000-5,000 words is the appropriate range. 2. The events mentioned in the first three paragraphs should span 3 chapters, if not more. 3. In fiction, there's a concept called "show, don't tell." Gradually reveal things instead of just explaining it a big info dump. Furthermore, it's preferable if you don't just explain it outright but indirectly suggest a thing by having it be implied by something else. For example: "Scrappy McUnderdog was very brave and didn't hesitate to stick his neck out to save strangers in a bind." Instead of writing this, how about telling a scene where Scrappy McUnderdog risks confrontation with a potentially dangerous person to save a stranger in a bind? The scene doesn't have to be plot-relevant; it merely lets the reader know what his defining character traits are through observation. Another example: "Angus Marty McBeefcake lost his parents at an early age." Instead of that, maybe have him waking up to an empty house in one scene, coming home to an empty house in another, and perhaps visiting the grave where his parents are buried in a third. 4. Avoid prologues. A story shouldn't begin with a backstory. 5. Why is this set on another planet when earth would suffice? 6. Most importantly of all, keep writing and keep practicing writing. Never get discouraged. Never quit. 7. Read a lot of novels so that you get a sense of how other people write stories.

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Hi, There's going to be a delay of probably several weeks in me playing the game and for once I'd like to avoid spoilers on the plot. But I do have a few preliminary questions about it, from people who are already halfway through it or have already beaten it. These are just out of curiosity: 1. Is there a children mechanic? 2. Any big timeskip midstory? 3. How many chapters is it? 4. Any branching routes? 5. Any new weapon types? 6. The "turn into a past hero" thing aside, along with the reintroduction of the classic weapons triangle, has the battle system been thoroughly overhauled? 7. Is it strictly linear or can you decide in which order you do story stuff in the different kingdoms? 8. I've heard the support conversations in this game tend to be shorter and more superficial than in 3H. Is this true? 9. Are there a lot of minigames in the Somniel? 10. How big is the explorable area in the Somniel compared to Garreg Mach?

This isn't really a forum I want to get all political on, but sure. I'll bite. These are my two cents as an American who leans right: On one hand, I can see the Tories' side of this. 16 is a very impressionable age for a lot of young people, and we currently live in a time when the number of self-identified trans people does, due to fad and social contagion, greatly exceed the number of people who are irreparably "predisposed" to feel that way for life (such people exist but are a rather small fraction of the population in the West and elsewhere). Because of the mental heath and social consequences of a non-trans person first getting involved in and then doubling down on the lifestyle for potentially decades on end, and ESPECIALLY of permanently sterilizing themselves and pumping their bodies full of hormones while depriving their bodies of those produced naturally and in natural quantities, it's unconscionable to let a 16 year old just suddenly decide to do it after 3 months of crossdressing. A young person might have a goth or emo phase that lasts 2-12 months and then they grow out of it. This analogy must be taken to apply to anything that has the characteristics of a fad concerning young people. If a self-identified trans person is still sure of it after 2 years then there's a reasonable argument that it ought to be approved, but 3 months is next to nothing. Finally, while it's understandable that needing a professional gender dysphoria diagnosis can make the process take longer, in medicine it's always best to make sure the patient is actually sick before administering a potentially hazardous treatment. The above mainly relates to sex changes but also gender transitioning. Getting married, to illustrate a point, doesn't force you to live with your partner and act married to them, but in practice the bride and groom will consider special obligations and expectations to have been imposed on them by the mere fact of the arrangement. While I'm a foreigner with less than even cursory knowledge of Scottish law, and thus I don't know if the Scottish law would make it easier for 16 year olds to pursue surgery, it could still cause harm even if it doesn't, so far as it could impose on the 16 year old the expectation that they are "wedded" for life to a new sense of identity that possibly shouldn't have been ascribed to them in the first place. On the other hand, as the OP pointed out is it any of London's business to make the decision of what's good or isn't good for Scotland? The values of Scotland appear to be more progressive than those of the UK at large, and the solution when you have this kind of mismatch is rarely for one to force their values upon the other.

The emperor protects.

You mean he'd pick a queen among several love interests and the player's choice would cause a branching route because it also had political implications?

I'm sure many of us have come up with our own head canons for a Fire Emblem game. If you're just an ordinary Joe who can't literally program your concept into a romhack (if that's the correct term), but you don't want that to stop you from sharing the basic outline of what you have in mind, then you're in luck. I've gone through several pages but found no threads like this on the Creative subforum (nothing from the last 3+ years, anyway). So here's the place for that, unless the mods point to some designated other place for this I don't know about. Whether it's an idea you've been thinking about on and off for five years, or something that popped into your head 5 hours ago, go right ahead. (Mind you: don't share entire fics you've written here, but only a couple paragraphs or a couple of posts at most detailing what you have. And feel free to comment on each other's stuff.)

Hi, This is not a thread meant to hate on the new game. I've preordered not only the game but its Divine Edition and I look forward more than not to playing it as soon as it drops in January. BUT, that having been said, I do have a major concern. This game was designed with Fire Emblem's 30th anniversary in mind. Though it missed that deadline, it's clearly meant to be a work celebrating the franchise at large. By now it's well known that possibly dozens of units from previous installments will be playable here. The problem is, for starters, not all Fire Emblem is set in the same world. Over the past 30 years there've been many different settings and setups from Archanaea to Fodlan to Jugdral to Elibe, with differing creator gods/goddesses who created the world and with different mythologies surrounding said creation. Which is to say that it could be incredibly hard to write a coherent story with solid worldbuilding and a believable history out of this. I've written many times before that I love Three Houses. That's in large part because the lore is both complicated and makes sense from start to finish. It has much of the nuance and depth of real-world history and largely feels like you're exploring a believable civilization, magical elements notwithstanding. And I'm sure that's true of many FE titles that came out before Three Houses; feel free to substitute for whatever your favorite FE game is. Engage, in contrast, seems like it could be closer to Super Smash Bros. And yes, there is a story and world to Engage. But I fear it not only will not but downright can not hold up to the same standard of quality of writing, precisely because it's a giant crossover instead of a self-contained work. Thoughts?

I haven't played through enough FE games to compare them, so I'm going to have to take your word for it. It probably has some narrative reason, such as with Fates, but also gameplay implications. From a pure gameplay standpoint, siblings have traditionally been a drawback to freedom of choice. Most notably, in games with a children mechanic, as they lower the number of 1st generation unit pair combinations that can influence the attributes of 2nd generation units. Otherwise I don't know if lovers have uniquely high support bonuses that other units can't attain. But obviously it doesn't have to be all negative in principle. For example, in the FE game idea fic I wrote, there is a "recessive inheritance" feature. I coincidentally didn't write any female archers, but one female unit had a brother who was an archer. So her descendant had a 1/4th chance of inheriting certain attributes (such as automatically having high archer stats and access to archer classes) from him as opposed to her.

Ooooh this sounds like great fun. The only thing is, I don't know jack squat about the plotlines of FE1, FE2, or FE3. I played the Shadow Dragon DS remake once but it was so long ago I don't remember jack squat from that either. So I guess I'll probably have to sit this out.

-Antagonist/morally gray protagonist who starts a war for lofty ideological reasons, with painstaking detail provided to flesh out their exact motivations (that is, Edelgard but with more worldbuilding and political exposition dialogue). The canonical rebuke of their actions as villainous, then, comes from their rejection of the peaceful civic process in favor of violence. And depending on the scale of the problem they seek to rectify, there may be a legitimate debate whether violence is in fact justified or not. -Good guy who's reluctantly a commander for the villainous side out of duty to his country -Villager who starts out weak and unassuming but if you level grind them a little they soon become f***ing jacked and will crush all your enemies under their feet -Most of all, a "Lucius" type of character.

Made in Abyss S2. For the last year and a half maybe I've been in a weird phase of my life where the large bulk of the anime/manga I've seen (especially manga) have been romcoms. I was still in college when I saw S1 4 years ago, and I enjoyed it thoroughly then, and yet, when I got the chance to watch it recently, I've been reluctant because it wasn't what I tend to watch nowadays. It was with some hesitance that I decided to give Episode 1 a try earlier today. I regret nothing. This is peak storytelling: breathtakingly beautiful and soul-crushingly dark all at once. It's like somebody set out to encapsulate the unique feel of (borderline its very own one-entry genre) Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky and create a spiritual sequel with a human(oid) cast. It's obvious that the mangaka is a huge pedo who'll probably be in jail 10 years from now, but you know, separate the art from the artist and all that jazz. And if there was a positive moral virtue that I'd ascribe to the guy, it'd be this: it literally doesn't matter how disturbingly hideous a character in his work is. They're depicted sympathetically so long as they don't behave like a dick. Even big butt Wigglytuff turned out to not be so bad. I'm just 4 episodes in so far but I plan to finish the rest ASAP.

-All Pokemon main titles post-Gen. V have been soulless and boring. There's no "magic" to it anymore. The last one I finished was Gen. VI, even though I briefly attempted VII. I've seen my brothers play enough hours of VIII to recognize it as being also a boring game. -To bring back just a small measure of that lost magic, all WiFi mechanics should be disabled up until a certain point in the game. At least the 3rd Gym, if not farther. On the copy's first playthrough, at least. After the game has been beaten once, it should be possible to enable full WiFi accessibility from the start on subsequent save files or retroactively on existing ones. But there should be at least one playthrough where, for a certain stretch of it, you're truly on your own. -All PMD titles post-Explorers have been soulless and boring. There's no point making another one if it's going to be little more than a higher resolution rehash of Super or Gates to Infinity. -Pokemon Go is soulless and boring. -Nintendo fans could use another Donkey Kong game. -There shouldn't be any more Super Smash Bros. It's got too many characters already. -Children under 18 should be banned from gatcha games or anything that encourages microtransactions. -Nintendo should recognize Pokemon's disproportionately adult fan base instead of ignoring them. -Nintendo's modern game cartridges shouldn't be read-only. You should be able to slip it into anybody's console and resume your game immediately. -Megaman Star Force shouldn't have been discontinued at Red Joker/Black Ace. -Megaman ZX Advent is an underrated game.

(Also, my condolences. Something similar happened to my brother recently. Almost all of his Switch games were digital copies and his Nintendo account got deleted so it's all lost.)

I'm a noob who played it (only twice) on the lowest difficulty and in casual mode, but here are a few things that come to mind: -Take full advantage of the monastery; in high difficulty you won't be able to level grind, so take advantage of every last activity point to either boost stats, boost supports between two characters that'll translate to some battlefield advantage, etc. Granted, there's a trade-off between monastery and fighting battles to gain EXP. But on days where you have to do the monastery, don't leave even a single point unused. Ever. Search the internet to find tips for the most efficient ways to use your activity points. -On the above note, scour the monastery for every hidden item you can find. Fish and garden. Look up on the internet where goodies are hidden. -Accept and perform all of the "help me with X" mission postings for as many rewards as you can possibly get. Carefully consider how you're going to spend your points on the statues based on the final party that you plan to have. -If you're playing on casual, choose your party carefully. Ideally, you shouldn't waste a single battle on a single character who you don't have to use and are not going to use long-term. The only exception is if, by recruiting a unit to replace an old one, you get a level boost but it takes you a little while in-game before you can replace the old ones with them; even then, you ought to prioritize giving that EXP to the units you plan to keep later. On that note, figure out what stats you'll need to recruit the characters you want and don't waste resources by not planning beforehand. -On the above note, if you're fighting battles where you have the option of ending it early (without defeating all enemies), ideally you shouldn't take this option unless necessary, and do this no earlier than the very last round that you can keep going. -Plan your unit classing carefully and don't waste limited resources on boosting any weapon stats unrelated to classing them up. -I've heard Lysithea is pretty good. -I never played Rhea's route so I don't know if you get her as a replacement for Edelgard. If not, however, then don't choose Rhea's route (IIRC there's no Rhea route in Three Hopes anyway). Edelgard's invariably going to be one of your mains so you can't afford to lose her mid-story. -Edelgard's route is the shortest and presumably easiest in the game. Just something to keep in mind if your goal is just to finish the challenge. For Three Hopes, which I've played through once, my advice is much the same: there will be annoyingly many opportunities to spend activity points that you feel like are useless. Don't waste them. Probably the most useful will be the Training Grounds; know exactly who you want training together and increase slots early on to take maximal advantage each time.

Disagree. Battles in Three Houses involve fairly few people on both sides, whereas battles in Three Hopes are a slaughterfest with a carnival-like atmosphere of killing as many faceless peasant conscripts as you possibly can. In one side mission Shez might kill more people than the death toll of all chapter battles in a given FE3H route post-timeskip combined. Even after spanning five years, a given Three House iteration of the war is probably less bloody than a given Three Hopes iteration of the war.

I agree. That was a fun game back in the day. I wish they could've remade it for the 3DS back when OOT, Majora's Mask, Star Fox 64, and so on were getting the special treatment. I dropped it sometime during the K-Rool battle, after several prior playthroughs where I didn't get nearly that far, so I understand how long and frustrating it can be. But I think the journey was worth it overall.

I liked the ideological depth of this game, which was very unusual for Nintendo. It didn't seem like a cheap copy-paste of Marxism or the Protestant Reformation. Human civilization had been mismanaged by a senile space lizard with mommy issues for the last 1100 years (who sporadically started wars just to further divide mankind into smaller and smaller political units beholden to the church) and noblemen/noblewomen everywhere were miserable for being born into the crest system. But IIRC wasn't Claude also planning to eventually rebel against the church had Edelgard done nothing? And Dimitri himself was a supporter of incremental reform from the start. She came of age in an unprecedented time when all of the future political leadership of Fodlan was ready to force change. The true morale of FE3H and Edelgard's war? Lack of communication kills. Literally

Does anyone by chance know the title of that medieval-sounding OST in D# Minor? Might be more than one OST but I think it's like the same general medley for all of them. It plays during some maps and even support conversations.

It's worth noting that "Three Houses" is an English localization. The original title translates to something like "Wind, Flower, Snow, Moon", which is based on an ancient Chinese poem.

In fiction, there's basically two kinds of detectives: The self-taught amateur who kind of does what he wants so long as he cracks the case (usually he has good rapport with the police so they let him have access to the scene that random passerbys don't) and the police detective who goes by the book. A person who has studied being a detective for three months is an amateur; there is, to my knowledge, no such thing as a school where you can be awarded a degree in detective-ing. Because the amateur doesn't necessarily have access to CCTV/traffic camera footage, fingerprints, DNA tests, autopsy/toxicology reports, and so on, he's more likely to play it by ear and put together a deduction based on things plainly observable to him as a layperson. These are highly structured and specific murder mysteries, focusing on "Who could've done it if the room was locked, or if they all had alibis" and stuff like that. It's the kind of mystery that you'll get from Detective Conan and Danganronpa. An American procedural crime drama, on the other hand, will feature police detectives and these cases will be structured differently. In my opinion these aren't usually as interesting, as cracking a case by checking five dozen security cameras or running prints on the strangled victim's neck is practical but kind of meh from an entertainment perspective.

Try the anime "Detective Conan". There are a thousand episodes to choose from, each of which covers a mystery (usually a murder mystery). Most of the episodes have him as a child who uses somebody else as a mouthpiece to announce his deductions. But a few have him as a confident young man with a flair for showmanship. If the murder involved some kind of elaborate trickery, he might have some volunteers help him recreate aspects of the trick to impress the crowd. Watch enough of that and you'll know darn well how a detective character acts. Or, if you want something shorter, try the anime "Danganronpa". It's only like 12 episodes long so there's less material to sift through, and the detective in question is female so it might be more relevant to what you're looking for.

I say yes. Video games have at times shied away from physics or graphics that were too realistic because this would've ended up taking the fun out of it. Anime as a medium embodies this principle. I see no reason why it doesn't also apply to literature.