Party Moth

My year started out with phone calls to financial aid while walking to university classes I couldn't pay for, talking with people who don't believe you are skirting the poverty line when your family's EFC is effectively 0. Somewhat related was a walk to purchase tools to commit suicide, interrupted only by a long phone call 5 minutes away from the store. It was promptly followed by the flu, which left me bedridden for a month and led to otitis media with effusion, effectively putting me out of school, work, and generally loud areas for the four months that followed that. The rest of the year was largely spent running on about $2 a day for food while hounding off debt collectors and being turned down job after job. At the same time, my grandmother developed a brain tumor. I have no love for 2016, and my generally cynical nature has only become more so as the year has gone on. My New Year's Resolution is to not become so sick that I am literally unable to work or go to school (mostly taking breaks and getting enough food and sleep).

This is a topic I could probably talk all day about if given the opportunity, including other video games, films, classical music, etc. I'll keep myself down to just one (and simply recommending it rather than running off at the mouth), or this post would probably turn into an essay. Sad to cut it down to the single leitmotif, but for now I'll recommend "Nyna, Forlorn Princess" from Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon. [spoiler=The video]

Base. Conversations. These are integral to giving non-major characters active opinions on the ongoing events of their world, especially when supports are so abundant yet accessible at all points of the narrative. Expanded magic. Fates especially has really dialed back magic in its gameplay and world building applications by scrunching them all up into a small array of spells under a single general magic rank. Better executed choices and consequences. Kaze's potential death in Birthright is a great example of a mechanic poorly implemented. If you're going to threaten the player with the (preventable) death of a unit story-wise, make that unit's ability to persevere based on resolving doubts and distractions with friends and family. Kaze dying due to be weighed down by an unresolved serious conflict with his brother would be a more interesting incentive for the player to explore his supports and work out his interpersonal relationships. More personal and far less likely to happen, I would prefer the removal of the Avatar and children, as well as a very strong dialing back of marriage through supports. These aspects have really strongly affected writing decisions, often in fairly negative ways.

From Path of Radiance: Daein Soldier: Now we've got you! Eat rock! Heh...eat rock... I'm pretty clever...

Figured as much. Interesting. What do you see potentially happening regarding future relations?

How's the rest of the world taking this turn of events?

Food, shelter, school. What little extra goes toward my profession.

Seriously, what is it with Awakening and using words in improper parts of speech? "Exalt" as a noun was silly enough. The book looks interesting, though.

"A kingless country is a country still; but a king without subjects rules naught but hills." Shadow Dragon is always a great reference for these kinds of threads.

Basically this. There has been a notable shift in direction, and depending on what you want out of the series this can be horribly polarizing regarding the fanbase. I personally have found every game past Shadow Dragon fairly unfulfilling, as Intelligent Systems has shifted their focus to a more anime-centric aesthetic and narrative. I find the UI and control scheme of modern FE to be quite enjoyable, perhaps at its very best in the franchise, but the use of DLC practices for golden endings/money shortcuts and sloppy execution of world-building elements leaves me largely disinterested and perhaps somewhat offended by recent titles (particularly Fates). The series has exercised a bit of laziness before, but the little details such as weapon icons no longer being personalized to the individual weapon and limited boss conversations outside of Corrin make the world feel dull and uninspired, on par with the early Kaga-era games' simplicity but arriving 20 years too late and without the interconnected designer's notes. It gives me the impression that the characters are simply here to look pretty and impress me (as their spouse or otherwise) rather than take part in an active world where their actions and interactions with other characters have consequences. But, hey: it's selling copies, so the games are doing something right from a business standpoint.

Seconding this. I've done my own analysis and come to find very little redeeming about her (save for a few supports), but a fresh pair of eyes might be what I need to understand the character a bit better.

Only just discovered that this exists. Going to nominate Blah the Prussian.

Just wanted to post for correction's sake, but the Jaffar/Rath support people keep linking is a joke/troll support written by a fan to mock how both characters use an unnecessary amount of ellipses in a game already riddled with them. It's not an actual official support conversation. Unless you meant that Treehouse was referencing an old fandom joke. Anyway, people find Takumi both aggravating and relatable due to his inferiority complex, which stems from a collection of factors that include his distress about being less "talented" than others in his family and having to work harder to reach similar benchmarks (as others have mentioned). His distrust of Azura stems from losing his father at a very young age, molding his hatred of Nohr to develop into a growing symbol of the force that takes his family away. Corrin's return (and subsequent showering of praise from their siblings) as well as losing his mother in just an instant are reminders of how weak he really is when all his efforts to grow stronger and protect his family are literally dispelled in a few days. This makes him into an occasionally irrational, lashing-out but ultimately somewhat relatable character. I hesitate to call that "tsundere", as tsunderes tend to be characterized as compensating for insecurities by coming across as haughty and over-justifying seemingly mundane actions because of a fear of intimacy with other people. Tsunderes are petty in a different manner than Takumi's almost childlike spite. Edit: Ninja'd by Dark Sage on the Jaffar/Rath comment.

Of all the sketches and artwork today, I think General Mackoya (playing Cipher with the Black Knight) was one of the last characters I expected to get some sort of drawing. What a strangely pleasant surprise.

This is wonderful. Thank you for putting so much time and effort into this project.

I'm of the opinion that Fates' soundtrack has a few impressive moments, but overall is a messy implementation of too many ideas and poor mixing on instrumentation. Many of its Awakening-isms in terms of composition and rhythmical ideas were better written and executed with more finesse in the previous entry.

I won't go into detail because my opinions are generally polarizing and I've spent enough time on here rambling about them. The Good: -Gameplay: Conquest in particular is a nice return to form after the onslaught of seize and rout enemy post-Radiant Dawn. The three routes are a nice method of experimentation to see what sort of gameplay resonates best with consumers, and the balancing of experience and Pair Up is refreshing. Probably one of the smoothest playing experiences in the series. The "Meh": -Music: I must be the only person on earth who isn't buying how "amazing" the music is. It's a step down from Awakening in terms of handling melodic material, and more often than not there are strange orchestration choices that don't lead to good timbres, sloppy articulations, and generally a poorer handling of the samples being used. Azura's theme is particularly polarizing, as it is often thrown into tracks with no retrogrades, inversions, or even changes in tonality due to its pentatonic nature. This is in contrast with Awakening's three primary identities, which mold themselves into the tonalities, melodic lines, and other identities in fluid ways more often than not. There are moments where it strikes true (tritone modulation and rising tension of the Chapter 6 map theme is well executed), but overall it falls apart upon further analysis. Perhaps it is obvious that I am a music composition major. The Bad: -Children: Poorly implemented, and makes the already superfluous anachronism of story events even more convoluted without violently rending story and gameplay from each other even more.

It better not be another Sticker Star. I don't think I can handle another one of those.

Battles take longer than an hour, and one definitely does not fight for the entirety of one. There are ample opportunities for, say, Forde from Sacred Stones to be taking a nap. Running into a comrade oversleeping during a cool down period between engagements is far more realistic than calling in an enemy general you just recruited into your room so you can rub their face. All that's besides the point of the thread, though. Regardless of one's stance on the skinship feature, this mess has blown so far out of proportion that people will be unhappy no matter how it turns out. All we can do now is wait for confirmation.

Undertale. A rare gem. Honorable mentions include The Witcher 3 and Bloodborne.

I may have a strong dislike for the game and feel disgusted with its development, but I'm not above recognizing when the game does something well. For example, I think Malig Knight is an excellent example of wordplay, though it could have been executed better with the spelling of Malignight (losing that awkward lack of an N on Malig). There are things the game (and the localization) does right. Beruka is also an actual name (Old Greek) and is not shared by other characters in the series, so I hold no issue with that. My issues with this localization so far is that when compared to the work of 8-4 it is awkward and occasionally sloppy. Kunai being daggers instead is a step forward, but they could have been knives instead, falling into place with previous FE weapons (daggers being ill suited to throwing and ranged weapons being reserved for knives). It lacks the flow and poetic characteristics Shadow Dragon and Awakening had, though occasionally they string together a nice line or two. Names such as Selena and Arthur are strange when there are already characters in the series with those names, and Severa's name change seems lazy and useless on her part because of the localization having it literally only being one letter off. The lyrics to Azura's song are meant to be in an archaic version of the language as they have lost their literary meaning to the characters, but in the English translation they are plain as day. Okami's localized names are designed to appear more natural to a western audience while still retaining all the elements necessary for players to look up the mythology behind them. Many of the Japanese names in Fates are not so deeply based in mythology, and cutting them down to being shorter than "Hoshido" shows that they don't expect an audience that often partakes in anime (which regularly retains the Japanese names even in dubs) to be able to read four syllables. I will take back the severity of my statement that the localization is ludicrous, but I will not retract my stance that the localization makes strange decisions every which way. Treehouse is at their best when they are able to write for games that can support their particular quirks at writing and localization. Paper Mario is their strong suit. Kid Icarus: Uprising is their strong suit. Fire Emblem, when it is intended to be serious, is not their strong suit. As to my fic, you are free to criticize it and my stance on the game all you like and I am fine with that (in fact, I encourage it), but perhaps this thread in particular is not the place to discuss such a thing and is veering off topic. Let's save that for a more fitting discussion topic (or PMs, if you'd like). Believe it or not, there are things I do like about this game.

I'd comment on all of this but truly there are no words. Or, rather, there are so many I don't know where I would ever begin. What an amazingly ludricrous localization this is turning out to be. I don't want to say "I told you so," but...I told you so.

You know, hearing that doesn't really surprise me.

I understand that, but my issues lie with the word choice and how the enunciation of the poetry kill the flow of the phrase. The original melody was written with the Japanese lyrics in mind, and when you work the other way around (lyrics for already composed music), the burden is enormous because the music already has emphasis and nuances in certain measures, intervals, and instruments. The performance by Rena Strober is another factor that kills said musical flow. Maybe it's the fact that I've been listening to too much Schubert, or that my compositional studies are currently putting extreme focus on lyrical nuance and adapting text, but it's something I personally can't ignore.

I can't say I was impressed...quite the opposite, in fact. The English lyrics don't lend well to the contours of the melody, and the cadences particularly lose their luster and general flow because of it. As much as I dislike Renka, I actually wish they just kept the Japanese lyrics and vocals.