kirbymastah

Yep same guy, also the same guy that commentated for miles's metroid prime runs :P Also to refer to the point about shortcuts, the three main areas have plenty of shortcuts/paths to take to navigate pretty well, at least in the light world. Of course, this can also be a bad thing - having too many paths can make the area seem more convoluted (which I would say Upper Torvus leans towards). The dark world is pretty disconnected though, but usually there isn't as much incentive to travel through the dark world when you're completely lost. I will say though, temple grounds can be a pain to navigate since it's basically one huge circle, where the only paths through the middle require you to go through Great Temple (and the transport access names A/B/C certainly don't help there either) IMO you're really exaggerating the U-Mos issue. The majority of the time you're talking to holograms left by past luminoth. You talk to U-Mos about 4 times in the game - start, after agon, after torvus, and after sanctuary. Each time, he basically tells you that you need to find the next major area. I see people complain that this is just like metroid fusion, but really this is completely wrong; the luminoth pretty much never tell you exactly what to do, they basically say "Ok, go to this area and have fun and explore". I can understand if you don't like the concept of having to interact with NPCs in a metroid game, since a lot of people think it's very un-metroid-y and removes the feeling of isolation. I personally think there's plenty of isolation in the game, since you seldom talk to the luminoth anyways, and there's still plenty to scan to learn about the world around you. I also think it's a little unfair to make a direct comparison about the dialogue with metroid prime. Echoes needs some sort of explanation about the dark world and your goal; otherwise players will be like "wait, why am I taking damage in the dark world? What is this dark world I'm suddenly thrown in?" Is it too much? That's sorta up to opinion, but IMO not too much at all. If you think this is bad though, you should not be looking forward to Corruption since that game takes the dialogue too far :P tl;dr while disliking the dialogue in the game is sort of a valid criticism (though again, down to opinion), I do think you're exaggerating it. As for keeping your ammo replenished, why would it take stupidly long? There are caches in practically every room in the game. Just shoot it with light/dark beam. Done. If you're not getting that many drops, well that means your ammo count is already high, and that's on you for trying to keep it so full. That's not the fault of the ammo system; if you're claiming that's a fault, then you should be claiming that it's a fault of the game to not give you missile/power bomb drops the same way as well (which, by the way, is harder to keep full than beam ammo). Drops in this game are more likely if you currently are low on that corresponding ammo.

I skimmed through the review and I agree that it's definitely done some things better than mp1, and some things worse. It's a more hit or miss game, as opposed to prime 1 which is more consistent but also plays it safer (for good reason, since it was the first prime game). With the common notion for the ammo system, while I understand people disliking it, it is something different that retro tried out, and it works fine. It gives another depth of managing your beams, because the dark and light beam are absurdly powerful (uncharged light shot does more damage than a missile, on a dark enemy. uncharged dark shot does as much damage as a missile on a light enemy. just FYI). It's also the balancing factor for annihilator beam, since (you're wrong about this) it's easily the most powerful beam in the game, with a ridiculous amount of DPS when firing uncharged shots that also homes and is practically rapid fire. It's only weakness is the fact that it drains your ammo. Fun fact though, a charged annihilator shot does less neutral damage than a charged light beam shot :P it's pretty crappy. The problem with the ammo system, in my opinion, is that the game gives you drops depending on your current capacity. Once you understand how drops work, you'll basically never be low on ammo. For example, if you're below 20% of dark ammo and you fire a cache with light beam, you're basically guaranteed to get a 30-ammo dark drop (and vice versa). Knowing this, ammo will never be an issue, so there's really no point in using power beam aside from using super missiles. I also dislike the beam combos, since they're all rather impractical besides super missiles. Sunburst is way too slow to be practical, Sonic Boom is a complete drain on your ammo. The problem with the beam combos is with the ammo you use for the combos, you can accomplish way more damage with just uncharged/charged shots in almost the same amount of time. Charged dark beam will basically OHKO anything that's a light enemy and/or is a pirate. Why bother with darkburst then? As for the areas in the game, personally this is my favorite prime game, but I do admit it's a more hit/miss. I love torvus and sanctuary to death, and they're very unique. Temple grounds is pretty cool too IMO, though agon wastes is rather bland. As opposed to prime 1, where it has more variety in its areas that are mostly equally lovable, but none of them really go far out of their way to really WOW you, compared to prime 2's sanctuary fortress. Some people really liked the concept of the dark world, like in Zelda: LttP. What echoes does well here, is enforcing the atmosphere of danger. You are constantly in danger, constantly have to watch your health, constantly panicking (at least when you're unfamiliar with the game). Some people complain that you have to wait in force fields to restore health; this is not the game's fault. This is the player's choice to wait in energy fields until they're at full health; the game gives you caches in practically every room of the dark world for you to farm health from. What I (and most people) dislike about the dark world is that it sorta expands how big the game is, lazily, and it shows if you go out of bounds in certain rooms, that a lot of the geometry is simply copy and pasted. During my first few playthroughs, you're not exactly exploring much new :\ Anyways, that's my take on the common complaints for echoes. It's certainly a flawed game but it's still freaking awesome. I wouldn't say prime 1 or 2 is outright better than the other persay, since they both do thing better than the other game.

Hey guys, There's going to be a charity speedrunning marathon coming up next week called the RPG Limit Break. In the past two years, it was initially called Crystals 4 Life, and initially was a speedrunning marathon for Final Fantasy games, but it's expanded to include other games from the RPG/strategy genre. For this year, the RPG Limit Break is raising money for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and the marathon is opening with me running Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn (No pressure at all!) The marathon itself will be May 12-16 in Salt Lake City. It'll be livestreamed on http://www.twitch.tv/rpglimitbreak (I recommend going to that link for more information about the marathon, including the schedule itself). My run will be on noon MST on May 12th. I'll be speedrunning any% easy mode, with PoR transfers. It's the same category as the (awesome) run gwimpage did for Awesome Games Done Quick 2015, with a few updated strats (including the fast enemy phase trick dondon found, saving a crapton of time!) and a different donation incentive. Since it's not in a bid war against path of radiance, I offered an incentive to save or kill the waifus units, since Astrid+Ilyana+Marcia are killed off in chapter 3-E to save about one minute. So you should all donate to kill them off and save me a minute ;) The current record is at 2:37:35 held by me which can definitely be improved (I'm hoping to improve it on my stream this week) but it's not too bad of a run at the moment. I honestly want to put this game down after the marathon run and getting a 2:36 (maybe a 2:35), then go to learning Path of Radiance but learning PoR isn't going to be for a while :P Anyways, it'd be great if you guys spread the word about the marathon as a whole. I'm really looking forward to flying over to Utah next week, though also very nervous about running FE10 :P Also, if you have any suggestions for anything fun we can do, commentary-related, feel free to share them as well since I'm trying to come up with some fun things. Obviously I'll play out the Ike vs. Black Knight fight scene, I might also get someone to read out the silly death comments of the dawn brigade while Haar/Titania kill them off in chapter 3-E...

speedruns are pretty fun to do

dang. looking forward to it, good luck!

I don't see much reason to care about weapon rank for tomes since you can forge tomes about as strong as them, plus weighing less and more accurate + more crit. Only reason to care is for siege tomes really.

Finally got around to watching the entire LTC. Great one, was very entertaining. As someone not as familiar with FE6, I'm surprised with how useful bow-users are in this game :P Looking forward to your next project!

Doubt it'll be possible to Ike solo chapter 3-1 since it's a timed route chapter. There are also a few gimmick chapters where you're forced to use other characters, like 3-4 where ike and ranulf both have to arrive.

Transfers can be used in RD on any difficulty. The only weird thing is if you made a PoR transfers file on PoR easy, I've heard there's a glitch where RD won't load that but since you're loading PoR on HM, that shouldn't be a problem.

You're already at chapter 20, and your rebecca is the most trained already. Rath's better in the long run because of horse+swords but I guess it's your call on if you want to train up Rath a lot more, or use someone you've already trained a bit. Regardless, one bow user is enough.

The one thing I have to hate on gwimpage about ...is that I have to live up to his run's standards for the RPG limit break :c screw you gwimpage for doing such a good run

and I don't disagree with that time slot. As much as I love FE, it's not a game that should be put in prime hours since it's aimed at a more focused audience rather than a general wider audience. People who want to watch FE will be willing to stay up late for this run and it was infinitely more than worth it <3

To be fair, fire emblem speedruns aren't for everyone so the drop in viewercount is expected. However, they make sure to have GDQs appeal to a variety of audiences and have a variety of games so I'm sure FE will be in future marathons. I don't expect FE to be a staple in GDQs anytime soon, but rather something they pop in once a year to appeal to our kind of audience here and there.

Really awesome run! Nothing bad/disastrous happened, the worst was that gwimpage misplaced makalov for part 4 but you improvised that really well and lost very minimal time. The oliver cutscene and black knight fight was awesome as well! Fantastic commentary between gwimpage and the couch commentators too! I would have liked you to go a bit more into the cursoring optimization but really, you covered everything else so well it's not a big deal at all. The time was 2:47 which, given safety saving, marathon strats, oliver/black knight scenes, that's a really freaking good time! I'm very happy to have FE10 properly showcased in AGDQ <3 To note, there's a lot of negative reception from twitch viewers and reddit users and such but don't pay them any mind, they'll complain about everything. The general reception from actually reasonable people that matter was positive overall, especially the donation comments~

Fair enough. I'm mostly saying that as I've seen countless discussions like this before for speedrunning, and a lot of people who are anti-glitch generally think they're so gamebreaking and make the game boring when I doubt that's the case here, so ECG being "too gamebreaking" isn't exactly a legit argument against it. Again, I'm looking forward to watching your LTC 0% playthrough regardless of your decision :P

Incorrect, it does involve resetting to get the set RNG seed before the start of each chapter ;P You just don't see it in the videos since each chapter starts from a reset #nitpicky

IMO goal is to beat the game in the lowest turn count possible with 0% growths. Therefore use enemy control glitch if it shaves turns. Simple as that. As a speedrunner, I kinda have the mindset of "do whatever you can to beat the game as quickly as possible within the game's limits" and I feel that should be the same here: "beat the game with the lowest turn count possible within the game's limits". It's not like the ECG is completely gamebreaking as it's only useful on a few chapters, and it's limited (only one turn, limited mines, etc). Regardless of whichever you decide, I'm looking forward to it though :) EDIT: Also didn't you already do a FE7 HHM 0% LTC, without glitches? If so, I'd be further in support of using ECG since it'd make it even more significantly different and lower turn count too :P

Ednerd's growths are also a lie. He does not have 60% strength growth, more like 20% in speedruns... :(

Oh man this reminds me of the time I used to speedrun FE10 easy mode without transfers. Thanks nephenee for wasting -1 to 3 minutes in chapter 2-1 randomly

Just spent a few hours reading! It was a lot of fun, congratz on finishing the challenge! (when's FE6 bows only hard mode? ;P)

This was a fun read ^_^

Chapter 1-5

Oh, someone has jill and haar and tibarn, booori- osnap, leo

I think you might be going the wrong way...

Saying Hector's promotion sucks compared to Lyn/Eliwood is kinda whatever, because Hector doesn't really need awesome promotions in the first place (whereas Eliwood and Lyn kinda need their promotion bonuses more since they suck a lot more pre-promotion). He already uses axes, what better weapon could he use? The main thing is Hector staying at 5 move, which was already brought up, and which isn't really a problem for dragon.