Topaz Light

Whoa, nice! I realize it's still being developed, but I do have a few questions... Has reclass option editing been figured out yet? For example, does DLC!Chrom come with his Cavalier and Archer reclass options from Awakening, or is he like a captured unit; locked into Lord and whatever special classes you change him into? Would it be possible to make a marriageable DLC character who functions correctly with the inheritance mechanics, or would they be limited to just C~A plus maybe a child-free S support? How feasible would it be to set up a character to have separate head and body models like the regular characters, so they work right when reclassing? I heard the Before Awakening recruitment DLC had some issues with that, but that may have just been due to how Chrom, Lissa, and Frederick's models were set up for the DLC.

I'm not really surprised that most of these skills work properly when applied to player units, because player and enemy units both use the same type of data, unlike in most standard RPGs where player characters' and enemies' data blocks are different. Nonetheless, thanks for sharing!

Who's Ceciel? Do you mean Celica?

Hmm, alright! [spoiler=Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light]Peak: When I found out that it was possible, and in fact very easy, to get Wrys and Lena up to level 20 in Chapter 3. Rock Bottom: When I found out about Kaga's bizarre bias against Axes only after I had already become somewhat invested in using Barst (who is no less beastly in this game than in Shadow Dragon). [spoiler=Gaiden]Peak: The oddball mechanics like how Magic works are actually really fun, and I love how the game handles the world map. It feels much more active and alive than it does in any subsequent games that had it. Rock Bottom: That weird difficulty spike near the end of each character's part of Chapter 3. [spoiler=Genealogy of the Holy War]Peak: The huge maps are absolutely gorgeous, and are generally a really neat idea that I'd love to see return with some refinements. Rock Bottom: How easy the saving system makes it to accidentally save yourself into an unwinnable situation. [spoiler=Binding Blade]Peak: I actually really liked the Frontier arc, actually, or at least the chapters in it; especially Chapter 11A, which was always a really tense and challenging chapter. It was really cool recruiting a Brigand and a female Hero, too. Rock Bottom: Chapter 11A is also a really big roadblock for me, probably due to my insistence on 100%ing it. [spoiler=Blazing Sword]Peak: Chapter 19E/20H was always a really cool part for me. When I was playing the game as a child, it was always The Big Hurdle for me to get past, and it represents what was to me a really cool climax in the plot. Also, Darin's death quote is still my favorite in the entire series. Rock Bottom: The first few chapters of Lyn's story. Ugh. Boring. And they're even worse on Normal mode. [spoiler=Sacred Stones]Peak: I actually really love Chapter 15. What can I say? I love mid-game arc culmination chapters. Rock Bottom: I hate that one Ephraim boat chapter. I could probably beat it easily now that I'm older and better at Fire Emblem, but I still have so much residual hatred for it from my childhood that I still hate it even now. [spoiler=Path of Radiance]Peak: I dunno, I really like the early-game arc when the Greil Mercenaries are on the run from Daein for some reason. Rock Bottom: I don't really care for Chapter 17 at all, honestly. Story-wise, it's fine, but the maps were always where I got stuck as a kid so I sorta still have that negative association with them. [spoiler=Shadow Dragon]Peak: Chapters 10, 14, and 15 were always really cool to me. Chapter 12x was also kind of a neat chapter, but I resent what you have to do to actually unlock it. Rock Bottom: Having to kill off around 75% of all the recruitable units in the game just to get four mediocre to decent characters. [spoiler=New Mystery of the Emblem ~Heroes of Light and Shadow~]Peak: Playing through the game on Hard Mode was one of the most fun Fire Emblem experiences I've had. Also, I still think that this game handled customizing your Avatar's character build the best out of all the games with Avatars. Rock Bottom: Kris' effect on the story. [spoiler=Awakening]Peak: The first arc was actually not bad. Also, The Future Past was fantastic. Rock Bottom: The same cannot be said of the rest of the story. [spoiler=Fates]Peak: I really, really love what the game did with Knives. It also did a fantastic job of balancing out Pair Up. Rock Bottom: When I realized that the writing was not going to get better and I pretty much gave up on the game entirely. Also, trying to keep Kaze and Rinkah's weapons from Chapters 4 and 5 for the rest of the game and finding out that the developers set the game to remove them from the Avatar's inventory in Chapter 6 because they hate fun apparently. This ended up being more "Best Feature" and "Worst Feature" for some of these but eh.

PMU stands for Pick My Units, and it's a type of challenge run where somebody invites other people to basically construct their team for them, and then they have to play through the game using only those characters.

So, I've seen people make custom DLC for this game (DLC for Before Awakening!Chrom, Lissa, and Frederick, as well as English adaptations of the Cipher characters' DLC), so I know that implementing it is possible, but I was wondering how feasible it'd be to make a DLC character who could support with other characters? Even just the Avatar. If the gay hack is any indication, people have Support editing figured out at least to a degree, so... (Also, before someone brings this up, I am fully aware that it's Anna's recruitment chapter that's DLC, not Anna herself; I'm talking about implementing characters and supports that are actually DLC)

no ...Alrighty, so, to make things more interesting, I'm going to be considering each character to only be "from" the earliest (in terms of in-universe chronology) game they appeared in. So, for example, Marcus is only available as an FE7 pick, Tiki is only available as an FE1 pick, so on and so forth. Buckle up everybody, 'cause it's favoritism time! Fire Emblem... Roger The Other Robin Luke Briggid/Bridget Ronan (I haven't really played much of FE5; I just think he looks cool) Gonzales, obviously Nino Amelia Nephenee Meg or Fiona Athena Katarina by default Brady Oboro (Birthright), Arthur (Conquest), Fuga (Revelation; by default) Honestly like half of these are under the assumption that their joining circumstances in this theoretical Fire Emblem game will be conducive to actually using them. (Also Fiona's design is actually my favorite of any Cavalier/Cavalier-type character in the series; it's a shame she's basically unusable)

Gonna second Azura/Arthur here. I'm gonna be honest, I was kinda expecting it to just be a half-assed obligatory support between two people the developers assumed very few people would actually pair up together, but it turned out surprisingly sweet and I actually really liked it.

Why are you even trying to do this? Let people form their own opinions on things.

GameCube games can only save to GameCube memory cards; nothing else. If you wanna save your game, you're going to have to get a memory card. There's just nothing else for it, I'm afraid.

It's important to understand that people rarely play LTC the first time through a Fire Emblem game. Low Turn Count playthroughs are actually a self-imposed challenge designed to increase the game's replay value, and lots of people who play LTC don't only play LTC. And, I haven't really seen people use LTC performance to compare characters in this thread, even? For the most part, the assessments seem to be based on... Immediate usefulness. How good the character is right away, without having leveled them up at all yet. This is tied to... Joining circumstances. How conducive the unit's recruitment chapter—and the following few chapters—are to being able to use that unit effectively. Availability. Renault is a fantastic Light-user and staffbot in all those forty maps you don't have him for. The effort versus reward ratio involved in using that unit. For Wendy and Sophia, for example, you have to put in a lot of effort to get them up to par with your other characters, and once they're there, they're... just okay. Unless you get lucky, you're not gonna get an obscenely-powerful unit out of leveling up Wendy or Sophia. You can get a usable unit out of either of them, certainly, but that's a lot of time and resources you're pouring into a unit who's not even gonna end up being a contender for any VIP position. Time and resources that could've gone into other units who weren't balanced to appeal to masochists. None of those are inherently tied to a low turn count-oriented playstyle. You can totally use whatever units you want! You can do an entire playthrough using only the bottom 13 or so worst units in the game, if you like, and nobody's telling you you can't. But comparing characters is utterly pointless unless you have some objective metrics with which to decide what's a good or bad quality for a unit, and how much each positive quality is worth in determining the overall competency of a character. (And how much each negative quality detracts from their overall value)

I mean, I'm right with ya there, but that's another topic. As for the answer to the question, there is deliberately no canon pairing. You're supposed to choose whatever romance route you like for Corrin, or none at all if you'd prefer. Azura and Felicia stick out to me as being the most likely to be chosen if they had to pick a canon love interest for him, but that doesn't really change that there isn't actually any canon lover.

Not entirely connected, but sort of related, I actually had an idea where Garon would turn out to be a Manakete like Corrin, and would want Corrin dead in order to seize their Dragonstone and use it for himself in order to capture the territory necessary to sustain Nohr. No matter what, Corrin's being a dragon should absolutely have been more relevant to the main plot.

I feel like I should've just mentioned this in my first post, but I actually had some kinda vague, general ideas, myself, mainly centering around Class Skills geared for buffing the Knight's abilities to play defensively. Things like... A skill that gives them an advantage during the Enemy Phase, maybe giving all Knights Vantage or something like that A skill that increases the terrain bonuses they receive. Maybe something like a x1.5 or x2 modifier, but I was worried that x2 might be getting a little broken, and it'd also make enemy Knights situated on advantageous terrain an absolute chore to deal with. Maybe it only buffs the bonuses up to a cap? Like, maximum Avoid bonus is +30 or so, maximum Defense bonus is +3, etc. etc. Admittedly, this is geared for a setup that uses Rescue/Drop instead of Pair Up, but a skill that negates the penalties of Rescuing another unit. The "Knights always give Dual Guard when supporting" idea is probably a better one, though, since Knights aren't actually very good for Rescuing so buffing their ability to do so is kinda pointless.

I'm no expert, but I'd imagine the game stores graphics and character data separately, and links them with pointers. That is, for example, Niles' character data has some values in it that tell the game which head and custom body models to use for him. If you implemented a custom character entirely by overwriting existing graphics and other data with new, then it should work just fine in link modes; the other person's game would just load the original data that you replaced instead of the data that you replaced it with. i.e. if you replaced Hinoka with a custom character, your custom character would show up as Hinoka on other people's games. However if you wanted to inject new data into the game without replacing anything, then they might make link stuff a little screwy. The other person would probably be getting invalid pointer errors, or some weird Missingno.-type stuff, depending on how the game reacts to being told to interpret non-character data as a character. Or I suppose they might just not be loaded at all. I'm not sure. Alternatively, they could just show up as a generic unit (captured generic unit head model) with a generic body model for their class.

So it's come to my attention that Knights aren't nearly as good a class as I thought they were when I first played Fire Emblem. It seems to me that they're mostly helpful in the close-quarters maps of the early chapters, where they don't have to move far and where their high HP, Strength, and Defense makes them well-suited to taking on early-game enemies. However, later on, when maps start getting bigger and your team starts needing to move further, faster, the usefulness of Knights in most chapters tends to peter out pretty quickly since they can't keep up with the action, and you generally have other characters by that point who are tanky enough to play the role of attack sponge/point-choker when necessary. FE1 was actually kind of interesting in that it gave Knights access to both Swords and Lances, albeit it was before the Weapon Triangle came into play and made access to multiple weapon types really important. However, I've also heard it said that Lances are the best single physical weapon to be "locked" into, so Knights can't really have it much better, weapon-wise, short of giving them an additional weapon type. I understand that the obvious solutions here are either to give the Knight and General classes one more point of movement to keep them up to speed with everyone else, or else design the entire game such that less-mobile characters will reliably have something important to be attending to in every chapter. I'm curious to hear what people think, though, especially people better-versed in more intense playstyles!

Of course! Ahh, yeah, I definitely still have time, considering I'm only turning 22 just next month. I'm not really in a super big hurry, but I would like to have a kid or two before I get too old. And, I mean, I obviously wouldn't wanna be in a relationship with somebody just to reproduce with them. I'd actually be okay with not having kids if it was something my lover wasn't down with; it's just something I want to do someday, personally.

Did you mean to put Revelation for one of these?

Of course! And, my situation is mainly just due to being single and, more to the point, currently lacking some of the necessary life skills and all of the necessary finances to live on my own. It's not really anything super complicated; sorry if my wording made it sound worse than it is, oops! I'm sure you'll do a great job!

Not counting Alola Pokémon as valid answers to this because their games aren't out yet and I wanna wait until I've experienced them in context to pass judgment. I don't really have any Pokémon I dislike, so I'm giving all ten total slots to favorites, in no particular order: Flygon. It's got a great mixture of cute and cool, and it can learn Fly, too, which is much appreciated since I don't tend to use many bird Pokémon. I also just kinda like Ground as a type for some reason. Sandslash, for largely the same reasons as Flygon (cute, cool, Ground-type). Sandshrew, too, but especially Sandslash. Mew, due to its cute and mysterious nature. It's sort of emblematic to me of the unknown (ohohoho) in the Pokémon world, which has always been an enduring point of fascination for me about the series. Reshiram. Gorgeous. Also I kinda like its typing and moveset. Zorua and Zoroark are sharing a spot and I'm only counting them as one entry. There's actually a story behind this one! I can't remember if it was over GTS or via Wonder Trade (I'm feeling like it was GTS), but I got a level 1 Zorua in Y version. Looking through her stats and moves, I kinda started to suspect that she was a reject from some Zorua breeding program or other, and I felt kinda bad for her, so I decided to adopt her into my team, about four or five Gym Badges into the game, IIRC... Even though I already had an Absol (who is also still on the team). She's since made it all the way up to par with the rest of my team, and has been doing quite well. On that note... Absol has really grown on me lately. I really dig the whole "scary appearance but actually benevolent" thing that they have going on. I also decided to work one into my main team in Y version on the spot when I ran into one and saw how adorable they inexplicably are in the 3DS games all of a sudden. Quilava are just about the cutest, most huggable little firebeans out there. Actually, I like Cyndaquil and Typhlosion a lot, too. Mewtwo, but actually not so much for its anime incarnation, as I'd imagine is the reason for most people liking it, nor frankly for how strong it is, either. "Artificial supersoldier lifeform" is actually a character type I really like in concept, although I personally haven't seen a whole lot interesting done with it. Mienfoo and Mienshao is probably my Fighting-type line of choice. Cubone and Marowak, for the sad backstory and, again, Ground-type favoritism. Also, speaking as someone who started with Generation I (my first Pokémon game was Red Version), I don't really get all the hatred for Pokémon like Vanillite or Trubbish. The series has always had weird object-based Pokémon (the Voltorb, Magnemite, Grimer, and arguably Koffing lines, and also Exeggcute, Geodude, and Graveler), and the newer object-based Pokémon are only about as different from the older ones as the newer animal-based Pokémon are from the older animal-based Pokémon.

I don't think I'd ever really seen that before; that looks really cool, actually.

Can't speak for FE3, since I haven't played it yet, but the NES ones really aren't that bad. They're a little slow-moving due to the clunky UI, but they're very playable, and both of them have (occasionally retroactively) unique gameplay elements to them that make them worth checking out. I'm sure a large part of my enjoyment of them is a result of my rather high tolerance for NESisms in games, and I definitely wouldn't recommend them to somebody who has yet to get a good grasp on pre-Awakening Fire Emblem, but I think it's a little hyperbolic to say that they're all awful. This coming from someone who's actually made it decently far into both NES titles. (I'm not gonna say it's easy, but FE1 is weirdly not nearly as hard as you'd expect the first NES entry of a notoriously-difficult SRPG series to be!) I think that they do some things better, some things worse, and some things that aren't really inherently better or worse, just different. Some examples of things I think they do better would be the user interface and control setup; how it feels to move the cursor around, move units, the layout of information like the status screen's positioning, etc. That's not to say that the user interfaces of previous Fire Emblem games were lacking (even the NES games' are pretty concise by NES standards considering the type of games they are), but Awakening's and Fates' are just really slick, smooth, and fast. I personally like the battle animations, too; they're a lot better than the series' first foray into 3D, and they also mix in some of the flashy cartooniness of the GBA entries' animations. They also introduced a lot of really cool new classes and skills, too. The big thing that comes to mind that they do worse, in my opinion, is worldbuilding and story. I haven't gotten too far in Fates, but in Awakening, the worldbuilding is minimalistic to the point of being almost nonexistent outside of the rare instance where there's a fact that you need to know in order to understand what's coming up. Older Fire Emblem games had between-chapters narration that talked about the heroes' travels, as well as upcoming events, the places they were traveling to or through, etc., and it really added a lot to the worldbuilding and buildup to each chapter. Also, older Fire Emblem games tend to weave the stories of minor recruitable characters together a lot more, both with each other's stories and occasionally with the main plot, and they have things going on in the present outside of being part of your army. [spoiler=<Minor spoilers!> For example...] ...in Fire Emblem 7, your first Thief, Matthew, helped out Guy (the Early-Game Myrmidon) in the past, by giving him food when he was going to starve to death. Matthew uses this leverage to recruit Guy into your team, and then their supports expand more on what happened between them in the past. Matthew also has a girlfriend, and those two have their own little subplot going on during the story. Marcia, a Pegasus Knight in Path of Radiance, shows up early in the game looking for her brother, who eventually shows up himself, and can be recruited into the main party. As for things that are just different? Well, for starters, it should be noted that Awakening and Fates didn't introduce Skills; they originally debuted in the first of the Jugdral games... that is, Genealogy of the Holy War (FE4). However, in the Jugdral games (FE4+5) as well as the Tellius games (FE9+10), Skills were not learned via leveling up in certain classes; reclassing didn't even exist in those games, and Skills were attached to certain characters from the get-go. For example, you might have a character who comes with Vantage or Luna right out of the gate, but then that's it for the skills they'll have. Some characters have multiple, of course, and Tellius introduced Skill manuals, so you can sometimes teach characters new Skills, but the Skill manuals are kinda rare in most instances. There were also some skills affixed to certain classes; for example, Locktouch being affixed to Thieves as a class, meaning that all Thieves have that skill just for being Thieves. Sacred Stones also kinda had Skills, but, like... the most simplified, watered-down version of Skills you can imagine. Also, FE7 had Lethality and only Lethality, as a skill affixed to the Assassin class. In that game and Sacred Stones, the activation rate is Critical chance/2 (I think it's actually technically, "If the attack rolls a critical, then 50% chance of Lethality", but I might be wrong). I believe Lethality has a halved activation rate against most bosses, and won't activate at all against a few specific ones, including the final boss of each game. Don't quote me on that, though. Also, "Magic" wasn't always just one weapon type! The Jugdral and Tellius games have the Fire>Wind>Thunder>Fire triangle, with those elements as separate weapon types, while the GBA games have Anima>Light>Dark>Anima. ("Anima" being the normal, non-Dark magic tomes in Awakening and Fates). The first three games, as well as the two DS remakes, do have "Magic" as just one weapon type, though. Although Magic and Staves work really differently in Gaiden. Finally, as for recommended play order, I'd say... Play at least one out of FE1, FE3 Book 1, or FE11 before playing FE3 Book 2 or FE12 Play FE4 at least up to the halfway point (you'll know it when you get to it) before playing FE5 Play FE7 before FE6. Since this is the only one going in reverse order of release date, though, it's not that important. It's mainly recommended if you wanna experience those two games in in-universe chronological order Play FE9 before FE10 Aside from that, any order you want to play them in is just fine! Although, I'd advise you that you're in for a rough ride with Thracia 776 (FE5), so it might be better to hold off on playing that one until you're really confident in your Fire Emblem-playing abilities.

Ahhh, congrats! I hope the remainder of the pregnancy goes smoothly, and that both you and little Esther come away from it safe and healthy! I've always wanted to have kids, myself, but I'm not really in a position to do so currently, for all sorts of reasons. Be sure to be kind and encouraging, and embrace and support your children's interests and identities! I mean, unless they wanna be a serial killer or something. Then maybe steer them away from that.

I'd feel a little betrayed about the distrust implicit in how long my parents would have kept it a secret from me, but otherwise, not much would change. They're the ones who loved me and supported me and cared for me growing up, so they're my real parents; their genetic relation to me has nothing to do with that. Interpersonal bonds developed through actual shared time and experience are more important than genetic bonds, after all. I would wanna support the biological parent who gave birth to me if the circumstances surrounding the pregnancy were hard on them, though. Pregnancy's already a hard enough thing to go through on its own, so I'd wanna make sure they knew that their courage and fortitude were appreciated. As for the topic of having kids, since that came up, I do wanna have... probably one to three kids someday, when I'm in a happy, healthy, stable relationship, and my lover and I are in a good enough place psychologically and financially to support children. I'd probably wanna have them sorta one at a time, to avoid having more kids than I'd be able to take care of, but for two or more, I'd wanna have one biological and one adopted, and the third one however. Although, I always feel a bit guilty for wanting biological kids, since I wouldn't be the one getting pregnant with the baby due to my physiology, and I'm fully aware that pregnancy is no cakewalk.

I'd estimate a threshold of about 9~13 HP depending on his max. Definitely nothing all that much higher than that, though.